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FAREWELL 
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SUPER DELUXE EDITION 





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Bu abies кытайы 


Someones “omin 





THE CLASSIC GROUNDBREAKING ALBUM RE-IMAGINED 


* 112 Tracks — 47 Unreleased including 14 unheard Pete Townshend demos 
• 80-Page Book with new liner notes by Pete Townshend 
• 5 CDs and 2 x 7” Vinyl Singles • Rare Inserts, Memorabilia and 2 x Posters 


Also available 
e 2-CD Deluxe Edition • 2-LP Stereo Edition * 2-LP Mono Edition on Colour Vinyl * Stream • Download 


^ OUT FRIDAY 23rd APRIL 











CONTENT 


LONDON * MEMPHIS * AGADEZ 










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ST. VINCENT Asa 


new album addresses her father's 
incarceration, art-rock changeling 
Annie Clarktalks us through her 
multiple transformations. 


MDOU MOCTAR 


From the interior of Niger comes 
the mantaking Saharan blues to the 
next level."Hendrix made me sick!" 
hetells David Hutcheon. 


CS NY Weller covered their 


Ohio. Now rock's second-biggest 
quartet reboot Déjà Vu with 
revealing bonustracks and 
poignant interviews with MOJO. 


THE CORAL 


Merseyside's psychedelic survivors, 
the Wellerfaves came close to 
catastrophe before returning with 
Coral Island, their mystic masterpiece. 


FUNKADELIC Fifty 


years since its birth, MOJO disinters 
Maggot Brain -the fusion of George 
Clinton's psych-funk vision and 
Eddie Hazel's stoned soul guitar. 


JAM SLEEVES Bill smith 


designed coversfor five Jam albums 
and 17 singles (plus a couplefor 
Sigue Sigue Sputnik). As he reveals, 
some ingenuity was required. 


MY BLOODY 
VALENTINE кемп 


Shields on his latest restoration of 
Loveless, what Alan McGee did to 
histremolo arm, and new music 
that might even come out! 


PAUL WELLER Tre 


latest (but only fifth ever) MOJO 
Guest Editor gets back to the day 
job. Cue: Fat Pop (Volume 1), his 
personal antidote to the pandemic. 


PAUL 
McCARTNEY Ram was 


Macca'sfirst album as an official 
ex-Beatle. Paul and pals recall its 
gestation and genius. Plus: Weller 
on his all-time pop hero. 


Mirrorpix 


MOJO 3$ 


John and Yoko, 

Lennon’s Plastic 
Ono adventure, 
File Under, p96. 





4 MOJO 


Blackheart man bows 
out: Bunny Wailer, 
Real Gone, p106. 























80 


Д Itcame from the | 
T swamp: Tony |] 
= JoeWhite, Lead | 05 
‚ Album, p80. 





ALL BACK TO MY PLACE 
Sharon Van Etten, Paul Stanley and Black Midi 
welcome you. But who'sthe JS Bach ultra? 


REAL GONE Bunny Wailer, Chris 


Barber, Malcolm Cecil, Sally Grossman, Dan 
Sartain and more, hail and farewell. 


ASK MOJO who debuted with live 


LPs? A doctor writes. 


HELLO GOODBYE : began 


when Weller pulled the plug on The Jam. And 
the end wasn't what К seemed. Mick Talbot 
remembers The Style Council. 


] EFF BUCKLEY Everybody Here 


Wants You, the official biopic of the late mega 
talent, is finally in motion, with Reeve Carney 
playing the lead. Director Orian Williams brings 
exclusive news, insight and images. 


MANIC STREET 
PREACHERS castadrift by Covid, 


the Manics were in stop-start mode when 
secret ways into their next album presented 
themselves. James Dean Bradfield and Nicky 
Wire explain the allure of the high 1980s. 


JAYN E COUNTY the original 


transgender rock'n'roller is back with an 
update of her memoir - Bowie, Warhol and 


Jools Holland all have walk-on parts. 


PEGGY SEEGER mainstay of 


transatlantic folk since the '50s is in 
Confidential mood, and talks brother Pete, late 
hubby Ewan MacColland Shirley Collins. 


PAUL McCARTNEY He's 


handed over McCartney III to remixers like Beck, 
St. Vincentand Damon Albarn.Khruangbin and 
Idris Elba tell all about their contributions. 


MOJO FILTER 


NEW ALBUMS Tony Joe White, 


rises from the everglades. Plus many more... 


REISSUES Spiritualized, John Lennon, 


Nightingales, The Who апа many more... 


SCREEN Guy Clark remembered, plus 


Billie Holiday, Poly Styrene and Creation itself! 


BOOKS Three Falls, two Bob Dylans, one 
Rural Blues. And more... 


THIS MONTH'S CONTRIBUTORS INCLUDE... 


Ted Kessler 


A childhood member of The Jam's | 


official fanclub, Ted’s first inter- 
action with Paul Weller was — 


disappointingly — when Weller 

| offered to fight him after a luke- 
warm Stanley Road review. Time 
heals. They've subsequently met 
for NME and Q, where Kessler was 
editor until 2020. This new inter- 
view marks Ted’s MOJO debut. 





Nicole Nodland 


Nicole started her career as the 
first in-house photographer to 
Prince at Paisley Park, touring 
with the band and documenting 


% k his life for many years. Since then 
| she has photographed icons such 


as Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles and 
George Clinton, Lana Del Rey, 
Sam Smith, Dua Lipa and Paul 
Weller. www.nicolenodland.com 


David Hutcheon 
Marking his silver jubilee as 
M0JO's nomadic world music 

E^ correspondent, David is in Niger 


this month with Tamashek shred- 


der and Prince superfan Mdou 
Moctar (see p34). Antarctica is 
~ the only continent he hasn't 
“we reported from, so if you hear of 
J anything good in the Grytviken 
3*93 gig guide, drop him a line. 





Arik Roper, Getty, Nicole Nodland 


| WITH: DAVE BRONZE ° NEIL FINN ° NOEL GALLAGHER ' BILLY GIBBONS 

| DAVID GILMOUR : KIRE | М STT ° JONNY LANG ° ANDY FAIRWEATHER LOW 

| JOHN MAYALL * CHRISTINE MCVIE * RICKY PETERSON * JEREMY SPENCER 

| ZAK STARKEY ° PETE TOWNSHEND ° STEVEN TYLER ' RICK VITO ° BILL WYMAN 








AN ALL-STAR CAST, ONE-OF-A-KIND CONCERT HONOURING 
THE EARLY YEARS OF FLEETWOOD MAC AND ITS FOUNDER PETER GREEN, 
HELD AT THE LONDON PALLADIUM ON 25 FEBRUARY 2020 





OUT 30'" APRIL 





, Getty, Lawrence Watson, Alex Kozobolis, Lois Gray, Chris Saunders, Jody Domingue, Chloe Mullowney 


Nicole Nodland (2) 


6 MOJO 


| DURAND JONES & 
THE INDICATIONS 
MORNING IN AMERICA 


From Bloomington, Indiana, The 
Indications have spent the past few 
years updating the sentiments and 
sounds of early '705 protest soul, as 
heard on this 2019 state-of-the- 
nation lament, with Philly strings, 
Jones’s elegant vocals and Blake 
Rhein’s Ernie Isley-style guitar. 


Written by Aaron Gabriel Grazer, Blake Jordan 


Rhein, Kyle Duane Houpt, & Justin Thomas. 
(802019 Dead Oceans Courtesy of Dead Oceans. 
Published by Songs In Numerical Order (BMI) and 
Copyright Control. 


З PAUL WELLER 

IN ANOTHER ROOM 

The editor's own contribution 
now, a 2019 rarity previously only 
released as a 7-inch on the afore- 
said Ghost Box. In Another Room 
is closer to musique concrète than 
rock'n'roll, а pastoral sound collage 
to match Weller's definition of the 
label sound as “both familiar and 
half remembered and very British 
but also something very strange.” 


Written by Paul Weller. Published by Universal 


Music Publishing, ©Solid Bond Productions Ltd. 
under exclusive licence to Ghost Box Records 2019, 
©Ghost Box Records 2019. From the EP In Another 
Room (Ghost Box records) www.ghostbox.co.uk 





TIME STORM 


Blow Monkeys frontman Dr Robert 
has been tight with Weller since the 
1980s, from time spent together 

in the Red Wedge movement and 
thanks to a musical vision that often 
intersected. Indeed, Dr Robert 
guested on Into Tomorrow, Weller’s 
solo debut single that named this 
comp. The band reformed in 2008: 
Time Storm is a soulful 2020 single. 


Written by Robert Howard. Published by BMG 


Rights MGMT LTD UK . From the forthcoming 
Journey To You on Blow Monkey Music Label 
(www.theblowmonkeys.com). 


10 P.P. ARNOLD 

WHEN | WAS PART 

OF YOUR PICTURE 

The original Queen Of The Mods, 
associate of the Stones, Small Faces, 
Ike & Tina Turner and others, sang 
backing vocals on Weller’s 2017 
album, A Kind Revolution, having 
worked with Weller guitarist Steve 
Cradock since the ‘90s. Her splendid 
comeback set finally saw the light 
of day in 2019; this chamber pop 
marvel from it was written by Weller. 


Written by Paul Weller. Published by Universal 


Music Publishing, ©&©2019 Edel Germany GmbH. 
earMUSIC is a project of Edel. From The New 
Adventures Of... P.P. Arnold. (earMusic). 


> THE BLOW N 8 


INCLUDING BLACK PUMAS, Р.Р. ARNOLD; 


RICHARD HAWLEY, DURAND JONES &-THE 
INDICATIONS F A FAUL WELLER ВАВА 


© STONE FOUNDATION 


(FEAT. LAVILLE) 


THE LIGHT IN US 


А sharp, long-simmering modern 
soul band from Warwickshire, it’s 
easy to see how Stone Foundation 
fell into Weller’s orbit. The Light In 
Us comes from their sixth album, 

15 Love Enough, recorded at Weller’s 
studio and featuring contributions 
from Style Councillors Mick Talbot 
and Steve White, Weller himself, 
Durand Jones апа, here, upcoming 
Acid Jazz vocalist Laville. 


Written by Jones and Sheasby. Published by Wipe 


Out Music ©&©2020 100% Records. 





11 RICHARD HAWLEY 
FURTHER 

Richard Hawley’s been involved 
with Weller on tracks in the past, 
remixing Andromeda in 2009 and 
The Soul Searchers in 2018. Weller’s 
ambition to co-write with the 
Sheffield troubadour and virtuoso 
guitarist has yet, however, to be 
publicly realised; an ambition that 
makes even more sense when you 
hear a song so impeccably crafted, 
so classically constructed, as 
Further, the title track of Hawley's 
eighth апа most recent solo album. 


Written by R. Hawley. Published by BMG Music 


®&©ВМО Records. 


1 BLACK PUMAS 





COLORS 


By some distance the most familiar 
song on Into Tomorrow, Colors has 
become the righteous calling card 
of Austin, Texas’ Black Pumas. 

The duo of Eric Burton and Adrian 
Quesada recently performed the 
song at Joe Biden’s inauguration 
event and the 2021 Grammys, 
where it was nominated for Record 
Of The Year and Best American 
Roots Performance. 


Written by Eric Burton, Adrian Quesada. 
Published by Black Pumas LLC, ©&©2019 АТО 
Records, under exclusive licence to [PIAS]. From 
Black Pumas (ATO Records): https://atorecords.com/ 





12 DECLAN O'ROURKE 


THIS THING THAT WE SHARE 


Weller first encountered the Irish 
singer-songwriter in the early 
2000s, when both were signed to V2. 
An enduring friendship resulted in 
Weller producing O'Rourke's new 
LP, Arrivals, and adding jazz piano 
here. “Declan’s a master storyteller. 
He'll put you in that place. You'll 
see the picture, feel the wind, smell 
the sea breeze. You'll be totally 
involved,” Weller tells us on page 24. 


Written by Declan O'Rourke. Published by Copyright 
Control Under exclusive licence to Warner Music 
UK Limited, ©2021 Maiesta Music Ltd IEFF02000010 
Licensed courtesy of Warner Music UK Ltd 









































































































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LOVE AND HATE IN WIND BEFORE THE TRAIN OVERTURE: MACBETH COSMORAMA 
A DIFFERENT TIME 





14 


4 15 
OU AIN'T GOT ІТ BAD CELLOPHANE CAR 


13 
CREELS 


PAUL WELLER 
MOJO EDITOR. 





CARGO COLLECTIVE 








| a Fit T (Sh Ф Ns 
THE CHILLS GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR JANE WEAVER WILLIAM DOYLE 
SCATTERBRAIN G_D’S PEE AT STATE’S END FLOCK GREAT SPANS OF MUDDY TIME 
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A landmark album from one of the great modern song GYBE returns with a soundtrack for our times: two Available on Itd cream LP, light rose LP and CD. Born from accident but driven forward by instinct, 
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УИ BEEN 














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UNCOMMON WEATHER EASY TO BUILD, HARD TO DESTROY SUN REIGN DAY BY DAY 
TOUGH LOVE LP / CD ROCKET RECORDINGS 2LP / CD ‘A’ RECORDINGS LP / CD TOUGH LOVE LP / CD 
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uncomplicated pop classics. 








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PETER HAMMILL 


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DJ BLACK LOW MCKINLEY DIXON DAWN RICHARD 


IN TRANSLATION UWAMI FOR MY MAMA AND ANYONE SECOND LINE 
FIE RECORDS CD AWESOME TAPES FROM AFRICA LP / CD WHO LOOK LIKE HER MERGE RECORDS LP / CD 
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& LITTLE MORE TIME WITH REIGNING SOUND 








REIGNING SOUND JOSEPH SHABASON ELEPHANT MICAH KISHI BASHI 


A LITTLE MORE TIME WITH THE FELLOWSHIP VAGUE TIDINGS EMIGRANT EP 
REIGNING SOUND WESTERN VINYL LP / CD WESTERN VINYL LP / CD JOYFUL NOISE RECORDINGS LP 

MERGE RECORDS LP / CD Joseph Shabason blends spacious jazz with fourth- Inspired by a DIY tour of Alaska, Vague Tidings Kishi Bashi travelled frequently to Montana for his 

Featuring the original Memphis lineup, Greg world tonality, creating an auditory map of his evokes images of a frontier lust run amok. Uncut album "Omoiyari" which gave him the freedom to 

Cartwright's poetic, moody ballads and upbeat, dual-faith Islamic and Jewish upbringing. Uncut compares him to Will Oldham and Bon Iver, while gravitate towards roots music now documented on 

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Anthrox Studios, Stephanie Nicole Smith 








I n 





ALL D/ 


Geordie Greep 


BLACK MIDI 
OVERDRIVER 


What music are you currently 
grooving to? 

Circense by Egberto Gismonti. The 
brilliant, brilliant, brilliant Brazilian 
multi-instrumentalist gives you 
eight dynamite tunes. Despite 
being almost entirely instrumental, 
this is a truly absorbing, accessible 
listen, with even its occasional 
detours into schmaltz saved by an 
omnipresent vivacity. 

















What, if push comes to shove, is 
your all-time favourite album? 


What's Going On by Marvin Gaye. 
Cliché answer but there is no 36 
minutes of recorded music | find 
more enjoyable. 


What was the first record you ever 
bought? And where did you buy it? 


Take Me Out by Franz Ferdinand. 











STAG 


Sharon Van Etten 


E AND SCREEN STAR 

















What music are you currently 
grooving to? 

Adriana McCassim’s debut EP Quiet 
Sides. [She] reminds me of my younger 
self. She worked as an intern ata 
management company, learned how 
to record herself and others, as well as 
thriving on constant motion, inspired 
by heartbreak, yet feeling rooted in 
self-awareness and contemplation. 


What, if push comes to shove, is 
your all-time favourite album? 


Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk. Makes me 
miss playing with my band and 
embracing the flaws of live feels. 


What was the first record you ever 
bought? And where did you buy it? 


Elastica’s first aloum. | was 14. | 
bought this at a Sam Goody at the 
mall, on cassette, the summer we 
were driving cross-country from 
New Jersey to drop my brother off 

at college in Arizona. l'm one of five 
kids and my Walkman was everything 
to me. Still love this record. 


Which musician, other than your- 
self, have you ever wanted to be? 
Joan Jett. I've always had this inner 
rocker alter ego that sneaks out. | still 
try and conjure her attitude in my 
vocal performances, but no one could 
ever replicate what she has done. 


What do you sing in the shower? 


Unchained Melody. It became а 
melody to my child early on. [It] may 
be one of the best melodies ever. 


What is your favourite Saturday 
night record? 

Portishead’s Dummy. | always think 
of high school when | hear this album. 
Driving in my friend Rob’s Jeep 
Wrangler, with the windows down, to 
the beach and being silly teenagers. 


And your Sunday morning record? 


Lucinda Williams’ World Without 
Tears. One of the best singers of our 
time. She sets a tone, takes you places. 


epic Ten is out digitally on April 16. 
Physical release is June 11 on Ba Da Bing. 


Great song, very well put together. 


Which musician, other than your- 
self, have you ever wanted to be? 


An infinite amount of wonderful 
artists for an infinite amount of 
ridiculous fantasies. My answer 
today would be a no-name musician 
in one of J.S. Bach’s ensembles. 
There would be no pressure to do 
anything spectacular, and no chance 
for your inadequacy to desecrate the 
course of music, but you would have 
a first-hand look at the supreme 
genius of the art-form and be the 
only person of the last 275 years to 
hear his work as it was truly intended. 
This is not even mentioning the 
possibility of hearing him improvise 
on the pipe organ. 


What do you sing in the shower? 


You can't sing in the shower - it 
disrupts whatever hypothetical 
scenario, seminar, argument, treaty, 
etc is being conducted. 


What is your favourite Saturday 
night record? 


Hats by The Blue Nile. A terrific, 
passionate album featuring some of 
the best vocal performances | can 
remember. The final track exemplifies 
this time of the week. 


And your Sunday morning record? 


New York Tendaberry by Laura Nyro. 
Truly unique songs with a linear, 
theatrical approach. One of the 
most striking things about it is 

a sparseness and sense of dynam- 
ics... forget about those hacks 

from New York, this is the true 
minimalist music! 


black midi's Cavalcade is released on 
May 28 on Rough Trade. 


NOI کد‎ ТС 





MT Е 


таш Stanley 
ARCHILD, SOUL MAN 


What music are you currently 
grooving to? 

| try for some diversity, and the idea 
of just living in the past isn't that 
interesting. | certainly find some of 
Arianna Grande's music really 
good. Allen Stone, an R&B singer, 
writes some terrific material, Post 

















Malone... and Billie Eilish is terrific. 


What, if push comes to shove, is 
your all-time favourite album? 


Wow, wow. So so hard. There are so 
many important albums for me, but | 
might just grab Sam Cooke Live At 
The Harlem Square. He is the founda- 
tion of so much, so important in the 
scheme of things. 


What was the first record you 
ever bought? And where did 

you buy it? 

It dates me but it was a 78rpm 
record. | was probably five years old, 
and my grandmother walked me 
miles over a bridge near our home in 
Manhattan to this little record store, 
and | bought, on Cadence Records, 
The Everly Brothers’ Dream. Then, 
you weren't just transported by the 
music, it was the cover and liner- 
notes as well, like a full meal. | 
bought the first King Crimson 


L ы АС 





record after looking at the cover - 
"| don't know what the hell this is, 
but | have to have it!" 


Which musician, other than your- 
self, have you ever wanted to be? 
My gosh! So many. It could be 
Jimmy Page, Jackie Wilson, Rod 
Stewart, Robert Plant, Steve 
Marriott, David Ruffin, Pavarotti... 


What do you sing in the shower? 


| don't often... and | don't shower 
on-stage. 


What is your favourite Saturday 
night record? 


Depends on what's going on that 
night. It might be The Temptations' 
Just My Imagination; Hendrix, А! 
Along The Watchtower; Otis, Try 

A Little Tenderness; Zeppelin, 
Ramble On... 


And your Sunday morning record? 


| have a compilation of Motown, 
Philly soul, Chicago soul. I'd have a 
hearty breakfast with the family and 
go ride my bike and listen. 


Now And Then by Paul Stanley's Soul 
Station is out now on UMC. 


MOJO 9 





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| 
Editor 
John Mulvey | | 
meme | HELLO DEAR READERS, it isa great 
Art Editor pleasure to be asked to edit this particular issue of 
Mark Wagstaff : : h h 
Неа our favourite music mag. Ап honour, too. MOJO has 
сооп consistently brought us incredible features on our favourite 
Associate Editor artists and introduced new ones too. I, like many, remember 
eviews > Я " А 
Jenny Bulley buying the first issue with John'n'Bob, and haven't ever stopped. Regardless 
Ш c of who's on the cover, I know there'll be something of interest to me. 
5 licer With some of the greatest music writers around, MOJO is always quality and 
eputy ArtEditor . | Е . А 
Del Gentleman with no other agenda than to bring you all this fantastic music, month after 
Picture Editor 
eases month, year after year. 
Senior Associate Editor I also wanna mention the brilliant Art Director Wags — maybe someone you 
Andrew Male ; ; | | | . . 

Contributing Editors don't know, but he's the brain behind creatively putting this mag together 
Phil Alexander, ae 
enon month after month and that’s some feat! Always great design and fantastic pics. 
ЕЕ Respect to him and his team. 

For mojo4music.com contact | А | 
Danny Eccleston So even if you're not a fan of mine, relax... no 
Thanksfortheirhelp with problem, you will always find something special here. 
this issue: ; | 
Keith Cameron, Fred Dellar, With thanks and praise, 


Respect: (from left) 
this month’s editor | 
with Ted Kessler and 





Among this month's 
contributors: 

Martin Aston, John Aizlewood, 
Mark Blake, Mike Barnes, 
Glyn Brown, John Bungey, 
David Buckley, Keith Cameron, 
Chris Catchpole, Stevie Chick, 
Andrew Collins, Andy Cowan, 
Fred Dellar, Tom Doyle, 
Daryl Easlea, David Fricke, 


Andy Fyfe, Pat Gilbert, Fame or infamy, what does it On questioning this I was informed that Bowie's 


Grayson Haver Currin, video for Boys Keep Swinging featured Bowie in 


David Hutcheon, Chris Ingham, matte r? | shan't be fo rgotten three drag personas, and this was more than enough 


Jim Irvin, Colin Irwin, David Katz, | 
cross-dressing for one programme — adding, when 


MOJO Art Editor 
Mark Wagstaff. 





Не Male, Pat Gilbert's article on Captain Sensible was a fine 








James McNair, Kris Needs, read [MOJO 329], but just one small point of order. challenged, that on top of that they didn't want 

Chris Nelson, Lucy O’Brien, idn? | Ж | 
аа ed Sewer oe r^ t с е Аин аган Bowie to think they were having a laugh at his 

Victoria Segal, David Sheppard, Е a ee ои expense. Captain appeared on the show resplendent 
Michael Simmons, Sylvie Simmons, record from the airwaves. Presumably they found in a fluorescent green fake fur topped off with 

Ben Thompson, Kieron Tyler, T. | | 

Charles Waring, Lois Wilson, а stick JOE frothy lager, and ma blow wave granny’s favourite wedding hat, and the nation’s 

Stephen Worthy hairstyles” far too seditious for the nation’s delicate 


youth were saved from further depravity.” 


ears. This refusal by the BBC to play the record Roger Armstrong, Chiswick Records 


Amongthis month's explains why it didn’t soar up the charts, though 





а it did make it t table 35, as the pressi 
Co e авт it did make it to a respectable 35, as the pressing | | . 
U.S. cover: Henry Diltz (Retouching plant worked overtime to keep it in stock. They Now, think of that for a lifetime 
e Te eee did appear twice performing Love Song, and on In February of 1980 I was 11 years old and the 
George От, Апдгем Gorell. the second appearance the curse of The Damned World's Greatest Pink Floyd Fan. I wore the same 
Henry Diltz Joe Dilworth, struck, as then manager Rick Rogers reports... The Wall T-shirt for weeks on end. My friends 
Jerome Fino, Bobby Hammer, В d h lC | 
Chris Kirkley, Linda McCartney, uring dress rehearsal Captain 
Zackery Michael, WH Moustapha, Sensible wore a glorious white wedding 
ее рузае dress, whilst Dave Vanian, resplendent 
Smith, Peter Stone, Virginia Turbett, | | | 
Kevin Westenberg in his trademark black, could easily 


be mistaken for groom of the day. 
MOJO SUBSCRIPTION HOTLINE Spontaneous applause broke out 
after the rehearsal and a happy band 
retired to the BBC bar to await the 


For subscription or back issue queries contact |i di Th h 
CDS Global on Bauer@subscription.co.uk Ive recording. en came the message 


To access from outside the UK from on high that Captain would not 





Dial: +44 (0)185 8438884 





be allowed to wear the wedding dress. 





10 MOJO 


Nicole Nodland 


nicknamed me ‘Pink’. When I heard The Wall 

Tour was coming to LA, I asked my dad if he could 
get tickets. His friendship with drummer Nick 
Mason made it easy [ed's note: Josh's father was 
jazz bassist Charlie Haden]. After reading the Pink 
Floyd article in MOJO 327 it seemed like the role 
of Nick was one of mediator between acerbic duo 
Roger and David. That's also the feeling I get when 
remembering how Nick, after the show, took my 
copy of The Wall and carefully wrote “То Joshua" 
and "Pink Floyd" in big bubble letters, then spent 20 
minutes running around backstage, trying to locate 
Roger, David, and Richard to sign it [opposite page, 
bottom]. It's reflective of Nick's warm personality, the 
courtesy he gave an 11-year-old boy after a concert 
that transformed my life in more ways than one, 
perhaps using this opportunity to bring together his 
sparring bandmates one more time. That's what I'd 


like to think. Either way ГЇЇ never forget it. 
Josh Haden, Los Angeles 


Are you trying to be 
clever or something? 


I was very moved by the gravity John Mulvey 
accorded The Weather Station's attempt to make 
art out of crushing climate grief in his review of 
Ignorance [MOJO 328]. The final phrase — “The 
document of an introvert empowered by the vastest 
crisis of passion imaginable" — somehow stuck deep, 
perhaps partly because I didn't fully understand it. 
The accompanying image also served to deepen the 
tribute to what Tamara Lindeman has done with the 
record. Thank you — and her — for it. 


Mark Brown, Bristol 


.. Not gushing, but please tell John Mulvey I 
loved his editorial leader page in MOJO 327 about 
imagining a world where John Lennon never existed. 
Just that one sentence about The Beatles was oratory: 
“Under their influence, rock’n’roll was revealed as 
both ubiquitous, and profound; a three-minute thrill, 
and a subject worthy of lifelong obsession.” 

Chris Simon, Australia 





| don’t have to try, | am clever 


I read with interest David Fricke’s piece on the 
creation of What’s Going On [MOJO 330]. The 
temptation in writing any article on Marvin Gaye 
must be to fill it with the seamier aspects of his life 
and tragic demise, and Fricke remained focused and 
circumspect throughout. Berry Gordy’s dismissal of 
the LP as “the worst thing I've ever heard” did bring to 
mind the idea of the poisonous, manipulative Svengali/ 
artist relationship. In film this is possibly best seen 

in Powell/Pressburger's 1948 masterwork The Red 
Shoes, with nutty impresario Boris Lermontov driving 
Moira Shearer's Vicky Page to her doom. Suitably 
engaged, I turned to that issue's Theories, Rants, etc. 
Stone me if all the quotes therein aren't from the film. 


Chris Rodden, Norwich 





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God, if our parents only knew 


what actually went on here 


I saw the thing about Edgar Broughton [MOJO 
328] and it reminded me of something I have felt 
an aching guilt about for exactly 41 years. In March 
1980 I was in the front row at Edinburgh Odeon for 
Gillan, and The Broughtons were supporting. They 
were getting horrific abuse from the crowd and the 
singer looked like he was about to burst into tears. 
To my shame, as I walked back to my seat I played 
to the gallery and gave him the finger from about 
four feet away. He looked dismayed and upset. I felt 
terrible immediately and have done so ever since — 
pathetic little creep I was. At the end he was still so 
gracious and wished us a good rest of the evening. 
Edgar, if you read this — I am really sorry. 


Dave, Twickenham 


You know, you're really 
beginning to get the idea 


I want to congratulate you on using Lana Del Rey for 
your cover star instead of, say, Steve Marriott [MOJO 
329]. I firmly believe that if rock music as we love it 
is to survive, we need to promote new artists more 
than the classic ones. Lana Del Rey is a fascinating 
character, even if I find her music a little one-note. 
But she is undeniably one of the few major success 
stories in today's pop music firmament who works 
in any kind of rock-adjacent idiom. Hopefully your 
story will encourage older rock fans to check out her 
music. And maybe other modern artists. Dare I suggest 
a cover story for, say, Steven Wilson, or Idles? 

Conor Bendle, via e-mail 


.. Thank you for the fantastic Steve Marriott 
compilation and fascinating feature by Simon Spence 
[MOJO 329]. Michael Putland's scowling photo 
portrait from 1973 should have been the MOJO 
cover. In the early '80s when I was knocking on 
doors collecting tax for the Inland Revenue, one 
of our drivers was a handy Cockney geezer called 
Vic, who used to tell tales about the scrapes he and 
Steve got up to when they were kids. Vic said he was 
with Steve when they set fire to their school, but 
denied that it got burnt down; Steve exaggerated and 
embellished the tale over the years. A sad life, but 
what a musical lega 


Bruce Marsh, Newbury Park 





One learns so much 


about life in the army 


Really sad to hear of the demise of Jesus [William 
‘Jesus’ Jellett, MOJO 329]. I remember him dancing 
at many gigs throughout the '70s. Always by himself, 
he didn't seem to care if his dancing was appreciated 
or mocked. I once saw people throw plastic bottles 
of piss at him at the Reading Festival, but he just 
kept on dancing, naked. 

David Lynch, via e-mail 


OJMOJO 






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Alea guns Posen hrane rii 
iit тий оне ier pee pile i 


IPSO.) Regulated | 


MOJO 11 





THE HOL NEWS AND BIZARRE STORIES FROM PLANET MOJO 





——— ui^ Be mens - — -—-—— OR  — 


























Eternal life: Jeff Buckley їп 
London, 1994; (insets, from left) 
actor Reeve Carney at director 
Orian Williams’ West Hollywood 
home, December 14, 2017; 

and live at the Troubadour, 
February 4, 2019. 








meeting actor Reeve Carney meant there 
was no doubt who’d play her son in a new 

biopic. “They were introduced and... it’s not 
just that Reeve looks exactly like Jeff, but he 
sounds exactly like Jeff,” says Orian Williams, 
the producer and director of the just an- 
nounced Everybody Here Wants You. “When 
he sings, you really think it’s him. Mary 
watched him and said, ‘Yeah, that's my son.” 

Bagging Carney, a respected Broadway actor 
and musician who co-stars in Ridley Scott’s 
forthcoming movie House Of Gucci, was one 
of the more serendipitous twists in Guibert’s 
tortuous 13-year mission to bring her son's 
life to the big screen. The story began a decade 
or so after Buckley mysteriously drowned 
in the Mississippi River on May 29, 1997, 
after which the singer and his sole studio 
long-player at that time, 199475 Grace, became 
near-mythologised. 

“I got a call from Магу, 
saying she'd seen Control 
and wanted to talk to me," 
explains Williams, who 
produced the 2006 biopic 
of Ian Curtis and the 2017 
Morrissey film England 
Is Mine. *They thought 
Control captured the 
beauty and sadness of a 
musician, all wrapped up 
in one — the short life of 
an inspired artist." 

Williams leapt at the 
chance to be involved, 
having been fascinated by 
Buckley since seeing him 
perform at the American 
Legion Hall in Hollywood 
on May 2, 1995. *A friend 
was a big fan of the band 


- OR JEFF Buckley’s mother Mary Guibert, 


ime And Grace 


ürnubzxànur 


Soul Coughing, and they were supporting Jeff 
that night," he recalls. *I watched half his set 
before I had to head off. I remember seeing a 
sea of women in front of the stage and thinking, 
Who is this guy? Everyone was transfixed. The 
American Legion Hall is an old masonic lodge 
and there was a mystic element to the architec- 
ture surrounding him... it was mesmerising.” 
After several false starts, the project gained 
new momentum in 2017 when Guibert asked 
Williams to assume the additional role of 
director. His first move was to bring in a new 
screenwriter, the actor-producer-writer 
Dionne Jones, who wrote a script incorporating 
elements from Guibert's private archive, 
including entries from Buckley's journals and 
previously unheard cassettes on which the 
singer had recorded thoughts and song ideas. 
“Within four months she'd written this 
beautiful script that Mary thought totally 
captured his story,” says Williams. “It’s about 
his life, not about the relationship with his 
father [ill-fated chameleon Tim Buckley]. 
It's a love letter to him." 
Shooting is due to begin in September on 
location in Memphis, Los Angeles and New 
York, with the soundtrack 
using the artist's music 
— a vital ingredient other 
Buckley films have been 
denied. Guibert is also 
working on a parallel 
documentary project. 
“Магу has always 
worked hard to keep 
her son's flame alive in 
a respectful way," says 
Williams. “This is the 
last thing in his legacy 
she wants to do, a biopic. 
“She feels safer and 
more comfortable with 
the team she has now, ” 
the director adds. “She 
was willing to wait forever, 
and now it’s coming.” 


Pat Gilbert 


MOJO 13 





Copyright ©Kevin Westenberg ALL Rights Reserved, Orian Williams 







Cinders, incidentally: 
Jehnny Beth and Bobby 
Gillespie enjoy the view. 





Release was initially deferred for Beth's 
solo debut, 2020's To Love Is To Live, then 
the pandemic. Live shows are yet to be 
scheduled, as Beth has a solo record, 


BOBBY GILLESPIE AND JEHNNY 
BETH PARTNER UP FOR DEEP SOUL 
HEARTACHE ON UTOPIAN ASHES 


6 6 | GREW UP in France hearing male 


a novel and movie roles in production, 


it's the vocal pairing of Beth and Gillespie, while Gillespie is working on his memoir, 


each out-performing expectation, which 
transfixes the listener. 

For the Scream contingent, Utopian Ashes 
marks a return to deep soul balladry after а 
quarter-century of electronic adventuring. 

“Right after we started,” Gillespie says, 
“I sent Jehnny stuff like Luther Ingram's (If 
Loving You Is Wrong) I Don't Want То Ве 
Right, and George Jones and Tammy 
Wynette singing We're Gonna Hold On. 
Like, I want to make music with this level 
of intensity — grown-up songs, about adult 
struggle. I didn't want it to be 
just a boy-girl romantic 
break-up record. It had to be 
people who had a house, kids, 
a history — people with 
something to lose." 

For her part, Beth says, 
“coming out of five or six years 
in Savages, I was sick of being 
the decision-maker, always 
pushing a meaning and a 
manifesto, so I welcomed this 


| Ие ]enement Kid, due in October, and some 
and female voices singing together | | 
Scream reissues. He stresses his own 


on Serge Gainsbourg records," says mmu 
marriage is in rude health, but as he talks 


former Savages firebrand Jehnny Beth of 
Utopian Ashes, the extraordinarily powerful 
duets album she and Bobby Gillespie have 
recorded together. “It’s something that’s 

in my blood”. 

Its nine tracks have a strong narrative 
thread, placing a soured marriage under an 
unflinching, often uncomfortable scrutiny 
worthy of mid-’70s Lou Reed. “I want to put 
pain back into rock music,” says Gillespie. 

The collaboration was sparked in 2015, 
when both appeared at Suicide’s farewell UK 
show at London’s Barbican. After the pair 
voiced Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood’s 
Some Velvet Morning at a Scream appearance 
in Bristol in 2016, there were two exploratory 
five-day sessions in Paris in early 2017, which 
yielded “electronic soundscapes” topped 
with random lyrics from Beth’s notebook. 
Gillespie and Scream guitarist Andrew Innes 
duly returned to London, “put barre chords 
to them, and turned them into rock songs.” 
String arrangements were shaped with Amy 


Langley from Jeff Lynne’s touring band, but 


about noticing people’s inability to commu- 
nicate in the 12-13 years “since I got clean 
from drugs”, and describes the LP’s closing 
confessional, Sunk In Reverie, as “a song of 
disgust, a sentient being asking for readmit- 
tance to the human race”, it’s hard not to 
assume a certain autobiographical intent. 
“Well, like Chase It Down says,” he 
concludes, “‘we don't have too long — run 
your race, sing your song’. Life 
is over like that (clicks fingers). 
We have to make the most of it. 
It's so easy to get angry over the 


"| didn't 
want it to 
Бе justa 
boy-girl 


way a dishwasher is loaded, 





while outside there's a full 
moon. Life is such a beautiful 


romantic 
break-up 
record.” 


thing, and it’s so easy to lose 
sight of that. That's what the 
record's about". 


Andrew Perry 


opportunity just to jump on Utopian Ashes is released on June 25 





the boat, and enjoy the view." on Silvertone/Sony. 


Elvis Presley The Marathons Frank Zappa Johnny Clarke New Order 


Sam Christmas 


14 MOJO 


Are You Lonesome 
Tonight 
RCA, 1991 
m This August '69 
Vegas live 
performance 


starts off 


zl professionally 
until, legend has it, Elvis was 
distracted by a bald reveller 
who'd cast aside his toupee 
to dance. Cue ad-libbed 

words, corpsing, convulsing 
and wiggy falsetto bvs. 


Talkin’ Trash 
(ARVEE 45, 1961) 
The flip of ‘61 
hit Peanut 
Butter by the 
Los Angeles 
vocal group 
who also traded as The 
Vibrations and The Jay 
Hawks, this goofball R&B 
portrays a hapless suitor 
getting convincingly giggled 
at fortwo minutes 25 by his 
love interest. 


Watermelons In 
Easter Hay 
(ZAPPA, 1979 


= After all the 
outrage and 
satire of Joe's 
Garage, Zappa 
Ч cracks up in 
character as the 'Central 
Scrutinizer’ "ultimately, who 
gives afuck?") only for one of 
his most lyrical and beautiful 
guitar extemporisations to 
wrongfoot the listener. 


Rebel Soldering 


(HORSE, 1975) 
The Kingston 
reggae voice 
laughs long 
and lists vices 
including 
white rum, collie weed and 
jerk pork, before guffawing 
some more. The title is nota 
misprint of 'Soldiering', and 
may prompt a diversion into 
other suggestive reggae 
records about “welding”. 


Every Little Counts 
(FACTORY, 1986) 


During the 
| Brotherhood 
long-player's 
beauteous 
| Ш closer, Bernard 
Sumner suggests that 
someoneisa pig and should 
be in azoo. Cue laughter, 
followed by a courageous 
rallying, though he does it 
again later while scat-singing 
in place of words. 








PA 


ao.” | ГУ ntn. Tw Le 
ТАМ. — uw 
4 











| EXPLORE 
tunngs 


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PEN 





1 















Mask hysteria: Nicky Wire 
апа battle weapons at 
Door To The River studio, 
Newport, March 3, 2021; 
(inset) piano man James 
Dean Bradfield feels the 
poetic clarity. 













EXPLORE INTERNAL 
GALAXIES ON ROXYESQUE 
ALBUM NUMBER 14 


HEN THE Manic Street Preachers 
went to south Wales’ storied 
Rockfield studios in mid-January, 


James Dean Bradfield sensed magic in the air. 
"It was snowing,” he says from the group's 
Newport studio Door To The River. “And when 
the first snowflake came down, and you wake 
up to a beautiful blanket of snow, it was, Yeah, 
this is going to be a really good record.” 

The story began in late 2019, when the 
songs Orwellian, Happy Bored Alone and 
Diapause - named for a kind of early onset 
hibernation at times of environmental stress 
– were written and demo'd. Then the Сома 
pandemic negated all normal planning. 
Through separation, frustration, and their 
longest period ever without gigging, certain 
happy accidents helped find a way forward. 

One was Bradfield inheriting a 105-year- 
old upright piano, which 80 per cent of the LP 
was written on. Another was the direction 
which presented itself when bassist and 
lyricist Nicky Wire's words for Orwellian took 
the singer backto the 1980s, and what he 
calls the “clarity and poetry" of '80s Roxy 


АО УОККМОС ihey're good enough’ ... 
| releaseanewalbum in June called A// 
The Colours Of You, produced 
| by Jacknife Lee. Mused 
singer Tim Booth, "With 









hinted 












to his online massive: 
"Always come back with a 
bangerto wake people 
up.” He previously told 
ZaneLowe, "The next 
[album] is going to be 





(ЧЕ 


j= ~ 
|^ OM 


P 


called ComeOn You ^ ^. | ү 
MT № — | 
(right) revealed to WA, 





guitar.com that “I definitely 
have enough songs for an album, 
I'm just trying to decide whether 


Nicky Wire (2), Getty (2) 


16 MOJO 


c j 


March, 

are self-producing their 
sixth album. Bassist Rhys 
Webb speaks of “the nastiest 
music we've made since [2007 debut] 









Title: tbc (Wire toyed 
with‘Intimism?) 
Due: September 
Songs: Orwellian, 
Still Snowing In 
Sapporo, Blank 
Diary Entry, 
Afterending, Happy 
Bored Alone, Quest 
For Ancient Colour 
The Buzz: “| hada 

Й verysmugideaof 
howlsawthe world, 
but I've realised 
l'dundervalued 
absolutely 
everything in my 
life. | think that’s 
whatthe album 
became about. 
That’s what the 
music did, it found 
a way out of 
lockdown.” 











Music, Echo & The Bunnymen and The Smiths. 


"There's a lot of exploring the internal 
galaxies of the mind on this album, and 
understanding,” says Wire, who adds that 
lyrics argue for defending the middle ground 
and examine the tensions between 
online connectivity and healthy 
solitude. “It didn’t feel like the right 
time for spite. It’s more internalised, 
bathed in a comforting melancholia, 
rather than a self-defeating one. | 
certainly feel like these are some of 
the best words I've ever written.” 

After the first lockdown, they 
reconvened with drummer Sean 
Moore at Door To The River and 
carried on demo'ing and, says 
Bradfield, "building the musical 
muscle mass back up." After the 
second lockdown began to ease, 
they booked into Rockfield with 
producer Dave Eringa, working in 
the studio's Coach House, rather 
than their usual berth in the 
Quadrangle. "It's easy to socially 


afactthatlintend to 
make music and play 
again with Lindsey 
[Buckingham, 
Fleetwood Mac 
estrangeel]...llovethe 
fantasy that we could 
cross that bridge and 


all the shit that went 
down in 2020, this was a 
miraculous concep- 
tion" ...after releasing 
their new song Lout in 








James Dean Bradfield 


Strange House... it seemed like the 
perfecttime to goin guns blazing, 
no-holds-barred, full-on”... 

told 
Rolling Stone, "I know for 


everyone could leave with 
creative, holistic energy, and 


distance there, and it was, bam!” says 
Bradfield. “We laid into it and two weeks 
pretty much covered most of it.” 

"| recorded my entire fucking bass parts 
with a mask on,” says Wire. “But it’s the most 
rehearsed we've ever been for an album. The 
catchphrase was, ‘like The Clash playing 
Abba’ - The Clash when you felt they could 
play in any style. It’s quite a subtle record. 
There are, always, guitars, but it’s very 
restrained for us, and really tasteful! It’s the 
usual thing, miserable lyrics and great pop.” 

Songs include a rumination on Tenby 
artist siblings Gwen and Augustus John, the 
Mark Lanegan duet Blank Diary Entry and two 
songs recorded in Newport, which are being 
mixed the day MOJO calls. Bradfield thinks 
the last track may be Still Snowing In Sapporo, 
which Wire calls, “a reverie of when we played 
[in Japan] in 1993. It was a magical moment 
for the band, when we felt we could pretty 
much do anything.” 

“The only way you can touch that experi- 
ence again is by singing it,” says Bradfield. 
"Nick can still sense it and smell it and touch 
it, | can't. The start is like a hollow, just the voice 
and a floating, ethereal wisp of something, 
and then it explodes into something that’s 
full of hope and discovery. We haven't been to 
Sapporo since then, but l'm keeping my eye on 
going backthere, and having one last hurrah." 

lan Harrison 













everyone could be healed with grace 

and dignity" ... (left) is 

using lockdown time in her 

. home studio wisely: “lam 

№ recording new music... 

| just completed singing 
14 new songs’... 

| told the 

Matt Morgan podcast 

Г thathe intends to 
record 14 lost Oasis 

songs that “just fell by the 

wayside of various projects 

from down the years,” he said. 
“Some are quite old-school...” 





RHIANNON | j 
GIDDENS £ 


THEY'RE CALLING 
ME HOME 


with Francesco Turrisi 





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homeland. - Mojo ЖЖЖ fus жей шы 
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PIONEER 








WAS THE first completely full- 
blown in-your-face queen to stand on 
a rock'n'roll stage and say, ‘I am what 
I am, I don't give a damn,” declares Jayne 
County in her updated 1995 memoir Man 
Enough To Be A Woman. 

Hers is a serious CV: a Warhol actor who 
influenced Bowie, '70s punk's most extreme 
provocateur, and a transgender trailblazer. 
Speaking from home near Atlanta, Georgia, 
she cites The Third Bardo's I’m Five Years 
Ahead Of My Time as her theme, laughing, 
"Actually it was more like 20! I was transi- 
tioning from Wayne to Jayne in front of my 
audiences. Nobody had done that before." 

Growing up Wayne Rogers, County left 
redneck Georgia for New York, "in time for 
the Stonewall riots. The police were behaving 
disgracefully. Somebody had to do some- 
thing.” Shortly after, she moved in with her 
friend Leee Childers in perilous Alphabet 
City, where her Warhol-associated flatmates 
included “main inspiration” Jackie Curtis 
and Holly Woodlawn. “Everyone was on 
different drugs,” remembers Jayne. “It’s a 
wonder we didn’t kill each other!” 

Curtis enlisted Wayne to play a psychotic 


prisoner in her play Femme Fatale, after 


6€ 





18 MOJO 


TRANSGENDER PUNK 


Trans global excess: Jayne 
County feels glad all over 
with (right) Backstreet Boy 
Greg Van Cook at Club 82, 
New York, 1974; (inset) 
Jayne today. 





SETS THE RECORD STRAIGHT 


which she christened 
herself Wayne County after 
the most populous region 
of Stooge-state Michigan, 
and starred in self-written 
sex-fest World — A Birth Of 
A Nation. Impressed, 
Warhol placed her in 1971’s 
Pork, where the players 
sparked outrage at 
Camden’s Roundhouse, 
and, says Jayne, inspired 
Bowie’s make-up and 
declaration of bisexuality. 
Motivated to sing, 
County brought gross-out 
theatrics to New York clubs 
after forming Queen 
Elizabeth in 1972. “I went 
further than anyone,” says 
Jayne. “People would run 
for the door, but I wanted 
to freak people out.” 
Spending "72-74 with 
Bowie’s MainMan 
management, she later 
formed her Backstreet Boys 
band (future Ramone Marky 
was on drums), played 
CBGB, and appeared 
alongside Suicide and Pere 
Ubu on 1976's New York 
New Wave comp. County 
then hit early '77 London, 
and was rapturously 
welcomed at the Roxy. 


“They were round the block 











1 | э 
Т t, Ee i 


i XY x 3 





for me," says Jayne. *It was a madhouse!" 
This writer met her then, encountering a 

fabulous mix of screaming NY queen and 

polite Southern belle. Promptly forming the 


JAYNE TALES 





At The Trucks! 
(MUNSTER, 2006) 

И VainMan filmed 
| 1974's theatrical 
| show Wayne At 
| The Trucks ata 

A New York City 

eee (reportedly influencing 
Bowie's Diamond Dogs tour). 
Energised glam-punk rockers 
include Fucked By The Devil 
and night-life roll-call Max's 
Kansas City. 


The Electric Chairs 


(SAFARI, 1978) 


County keeps it 
{ clean, addressing 
И teddy boy wars 
on Eddie And 

E Sheena, and 
hailing Janis and Jimi on Rock & 
Roll Resurrection, saving the 
dirtfor that year's Blatantly 
Offenzive EP's Toilet Love and 
Fuck Off. 


Deviation 
(ROYALTY, 1995) 


ШЫ Recorded in 

| Manchester, 

I'm In Love 

| With Dusty 
ZUM Springfield, T 

exas Chainsaw Manicurist, 

Everyone's An Asshole But Me 

and Transgender Rock & Roll are 

roughshod punk romps of 

unbeaten spirit. 


Electric Chairs with NY guitarist companion 
Greg Van Cook, County released an EP on 


Miles Copeland's Illegal label 
before signing with Safari, 
releasing three albums and 
signature anthem Fuck Off, 
aka (If You Don't Wanna Fuck 
Me, Baby) Fuck Off!!, which 
featured a young Jools Holland 
on boogie woogie piano. 

Already undergoing 
hormone treatment, she 
starred in Derek Jarman's 
Jubilee (*a bit of a mess") and 
moved to Berlin, getting her 
nose done and becoming Jayne 
County. She spent the next 
two decades flitting between 
New York, Berlin and London, 
turning to prostitution in 
Soho to survive. 

Returning to Georgia after 
9/11 to care for her parents, 
today Jayne is happiest painting. 
“Tm very proud of everything I 
accomplished,” concludes the 
Godmother of transgender 
rock'n'roll, whose 2021 
epilogue finds her content after 
decades of bitterness at being 
written out of music history. 
With 19 feline friends, she 
declares herself “а proper old 
cat lady”, giving the book she 
describes as “historical... and 
hysterical!” its well-deserved 
happy ending. 

Kris Needs 


Man Enough To Be A Woman is 


published by Serpents Tail on May 20. 


Getty 


KILIMANJARO PRESENTS 


STEVE HACKETT 
GENESIS REVISITED 


SECONDS OUT + MORE! UK 2021 TOUR 


SEPTEMBER 2021 
) LEICESTER DE MONTFORT HALL 
2 STOKE VICTORIA HALL 
BIRMINGHAM SYMPHONY HALL 
CAMBRIDGE CORN EXCHANGE 
|7 CARDIFF ST DAVID'S HALL 
LONDON PALLADIUM 
MANCHESTER О, APOLLO 
EDINBURGH PLAYHOUSE 
GLASGOW ROYAL CONCERT HALL 
DUNDEE CAIRD HALL 
SCUNTHORPE THE BATHS HALL 


OCTOBER 2021 
BRADFORD ST GEORGE'S HALL 
NOTTINGHAM ROYAL CONCERT HALL 
CROYDON FAIRFIELD HALLS 
BRIGHTON DOME 
POOLE LIGHTHOUSE 
SOUTHAMPTON MAYFLOWER 
2 PLYMOUTH PAVILIONS 
CARLISLE THE SANDS CENTRE 
STOCKTON GLOBE 
| NEWCASTLE О, CITY HALL 
18 AYLESBURY FRIARS WATERSIDE 
19 OXFORD NEW THEATRE 
21 PETERBOROUGH CRESSET 
22 HARROGATE ROYAL HALL 


MYTICKET. CO.UK | HACKETTSONGS,COM 


A KILIMANJARO PRESENTATION BY ARRANGEMENT WITH SOLO 


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==——бАТ-20.САМВВ SOLD OUT N EXCHANGE” 
SUN 21 BIRMINGHAM SYMPHONY HALL 
TUE 23 LIVERPOOL PHILHARMONIC 
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MYTICKET.CO.UK | MARILLION.COM 


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12 SEPTEMBER 2021 
LONDON 


AN ACTIONI PRESENTATION ВТ ARRANGEMENT WITH PRIMARY TALENT INTERNATIONAL 


Ше! THIET УИА AP ЧИ ске со ик 





Peggy Seeger, 
Lady Luck: 
“My life is the 
prize | won.” 




























Seeger’s 

Hot Five 

Fado Tradicional 
Mariza (PARLOPHONE, 
2010) 

Hearts And 
Bones Paul Simon 
(WARNER BROS, 1983) 
Don't Know Why 
Norah Jones (BLUE 
NOTE, 2002) 

Easy Now Easy 


2002) 


Night Song /rene 
Scott (UNRECORDED) 


3 


PEGGY SEEGER 


Given your family background, was it your 
destiny to be a musician? 





| don't believe т destiny. | believe in luck. 
| was born into a marriage where the parents 
adored each other, the children didn't rip 
each other apart and there 

was music in the house day 

and night. My mother was 

transcribing field singers for 

the [Alan] Lomax books and 

we kids were playing with 

puppets in the corner, 

learning the songs. It wasn't 

destiny, it was luck. 





PICTURE OF serene elegance and 
A wisdom, Peggy Seeger's reflections 

on her unique place at the forefront 
of the folk revivals on both sides of the 
Atlantic are peppered with humour, song 
lyrics, acerbic asides, detailed descriptions and 
winning self-deprecation. Born in New York in 
1935, she grew up in a folk music culture where 
both parents and brothers Pete and Mike held 
important sway, and much of her tenure in the 
UK involved a partnership with folk singer and 
activist Ewan MacColl. At 85, her latest LP, 
teasingly titled First Farewell, offers more 
measured views, but she's as passionate, as 
ever, currently campaigning against building 
plans on fields near her home in Oxfordshire. 





Did your brother Pete 
inspire, advise or even pass 
comment on your work? 


In the early days, no, but 
when he heard other people 


20 MOJO 


Tom Paxton (APPLESEED, 


singing my songs he did say 

he thought | was a really good 
songwriter. Then he sang my song 
I'm Gonna Be An Engineer and it 
was the first time | was ever really 
honest with him, because Peter 
never really liked personal talk. 
But when he sang it he left out the 
verses that are in minor, and | said, 
"Pete, either don't sing it or put the 
verses back in." 


When Roberta Flack went to 
Number 1 with TheFirst Time 
Ever I Saw Your Face (written 
by MacColl for Seeger) were 
you ever jealous that it wasn't 
your version? 


No! We were angry, but | wasn't 
jealous. | must admit, though, l've 


been jealous recently. When my book [2018's 
memoir First Time Ever] was up for the 
Penderyn Music Book Prize, | wanted that 
prize, but Shirley Collins won it. l'm happy for 
her. I think she gota rough ride from Alan 
Lomax, but l've read all her books and she's 
done an amazing job. І don't begrudge 
Shirley - | figure my life is the prize | won. 


Did you fall out with Shirley? She said 
some stuff about Ewan... 


No we didn't fall out. | had trouble believing 
what she wrote in her book [All п The Downs, 
2017] about Ewan trying to seduce her in his 
flat. | mean, the flat had two bedrooms and 
one living room and in ії lived his mother, his 
wife, his son and him - not the sort of place 
to take someone to seduce them. | don't 
disbelieve Shirley, but | didn't necessarily 
wantto hear those things. But then Ewan 

was a fast worker... 


Isittrue you went backto America after 
Ewan died because you couldn't get any 
work in Britain? 


Ewan died in 1989 and | left т 1995.1 had no 
idea who I was оп my own. I took him on as 

a father figure and now he was gone. | was in 
a dreadful state - near nervous breakdown. So 
| had tofind a way of performing on my own. 
Irene [Scott, her partner] said, "You can't just 
getup there and lecture on politics. You've 
got to be funny and tell stories.” So | left for six 
years and it made it possible for me to get up 
on stage and not be shaking like a leaf. 


What have you learned? 


l've learned to be grateful. Recently there was 
something up on the web where I'm holding 
forth as Ewan's echo chamber, and honest 

to god, | looked fantastic but | sounded 
ridiculous. And I've learned not to play songs 


so damn fast. I’ve learned as 
long as people keep singing 
First Time Ever, | will havea 
comfortable old age. 


Tell us something you've 
never told an interviewer 
before... 


I'm a connoisseur when it 
comes to judging interview- 
ers, and what ГА love to tell 
them is “You talk too much.” 
| want to say, “Ask a question 
...and then listen!” 

Colin Irwin 


Z^ 
4 
4 
U 
WD 


CI с\з IGED 































A. R ECORD | 


MY I 
Robert Finley 


LIFE 


Ий In 1972, | was working as 
a maintenance man in 
Houston, mainly fixing up 
77 apartments. | was also 

~“. playing talent shows and 
1. local clubs, but it was just 







| Жору at weekends, for fun. | wanted 


to make a living from it, but it's all about 


| being in the right place at the right time. 


In the clubs, | was singing blues, 
mostly my own songs. Г use punchlines 


| to make people laugh, so if the audience 


didn’t like the singing, I'd at least get 


| their attention. I'd heard Al Green on 






































jukeboxes and on the radio, and | just fell 
for his style of singing, in falsetto, and 
I found that the тоге І sung in falsetto, 


| the more audiences reacted. Don't get 


me wrong -llove singing baritone or 


| bass, but falsetto sounds more relaxing 


and touching, because it comes from the 
heart, and gets into your soul a lot easier. 


|! And when you get comfortable in it, 
| there’s nolimit to where you can go. 


When I heard Al sing Love And 


|. Happiness [from the LP /'m Still In Love 


With You], that’s when he really stuck 


| with me, because love and happiness is 


what everyone is striving for. When you 
have captured the audience's attention, 
you need to give them something 
positive, because we have a shortage of 
love and joy. When you sing, people 


| listen, rather than talking to someone, 


| because they're always interrupting, or 






































disagreeing with you. So, Al's words 
were a great choice, апа loved the way 
his music told a story - it always had an 


| ending, you could tell what was going on. 


I tried to imitate Al, but I wasn't that 


| good atit. Now that I’m making records 


myself, one day | might get the chance 
to sing with him, you never know. You 


| should never quit dreaming, because if 
| you're satisfied with everything you've 


done, you have no purpose any more. 
As toldto Martin Aston 


| RobertFinley's Sharecropper’s Son - 
produced by Dan Auerbach - is released on 
May 21 on Easy Eye Sound. 





WHAT t 


JOES 


POST-PUNK! HIP-HOP! 


SLEAZE! 


AND 


TELL ALL ABOUT 
MACCA'S NEW REMIX LP 


OWN THE years, Paul McCartney 
D has been no stranger to the trans- 

formative powers of the remix. His 
1993 ambient electronic album Strawberries 
Oceans Ships Forest, made as The Fireman 
in cahoots with Youth, was the result of 
McCartney letting loose the producer/ 
Killing Joke bassist on the tapes of his 
just-released Off The Ground. Then, in 2005, 
Macca hooked up with mash-up artist 
Freelance Hellraiser for the radical shape- 
shifting of tracks from his back catalogue — 
everything from Maybe I'm Amazed to 
Temporary Secretary — on Twin Freaks. 

Now McCartney has gone further, handing 
over the masters to his third eponymous solo 
LP, recorded last year in lockdown, to various 
artists ranging from Beck and St. Vincent to 
Anderson .Paak and Damon Albarn. The 
result is the tellingly-titled McCartney III 
Imagined, which sees the original tracks being 
either remixed in a traditionally dancefloor- 
minded fashion, or — in the case of Phoebe 
Bridgers' dreamy Elliott Smith-ish take on 
Seize The Day or Josh 
Homme’s sleazy rendering of 
Lavatory Lil — being treated 
аз cover versions. 

Texan groove specialists 
Khruangbin tackled 
McCartney’s teen pop band 
commentary Pretty Boys, 
reworking it into their 
trademark dub funk style. 
The band say they were 
already big Macca fans, with 
his 1979 Wings electro R&B 
cut Arrow Through Me in 
particular being much- 
played on their tour bus. 
“Oh, that is, like, the jam,” 
says guitarist Mark Speer. 
“That gets constant play.” 

Khruangbin initially 
experimented with different 
treatments of Pretty Boys, 





“Indubitably a hit!” 


MCCARTNEY 





including one with a Brazilian flavour, before 
settling on what bassist/singer Laura Lee calls 
their final “post-punk dance approach”, 
featuring her French-sung counterpoint to 
McCartney’s vocal with her coolly intoned 
refrain of “jolie garcons”. The trio jammed 
along with the original vocal, collaborating 
with an invisible singer. “Yeah, and the invisi- 
ble singer is Paul McCartney!” Lee marvels. 

Elsewhere, actor/musician Idris Elba 
reworked McCartney III's opener Long Tailed 
Winter Bird into a folky hip-hop head-nod- 
der, after interviewing Paul for a BBC TV 
special aired in December 2020. “He didn’t 
approach me, I sort of approached him,” Elba 
laughs. “Paul said, ‘It isn’t an obvious one to 
remix because it’s the one with the least 
vocals on it. It’s a jam that I just loved. Have 
a go and do what you want with it.” 

Boldly, Elba wrote an additional melodic 
hook and invited McCartney to sing it. “He sent 
me this beautiful text saying, ‘It’s indubitably a 
hit.’ I was like, ‘Oh... fuck... what?’ A couple 
of days later he sent me his vocal singing the 
hook that I wrote for the 
remix... which was so weird. 
Then he sent a text saying, 
"We absolutely love it.” 

Both Khruangbin and 
Idris Elba received calls and 
messages from McCartney 
offering positive feedback 
about their remixes. “He 
liked my bass line,” reveals 
Laura Lee. Elba admits, “I 
just can’t believe it. This is 
The Beatles; this is one of 
the pillars of music. There’s 
nota producer/ songwriter 
that hasn’t been influenced 
somehow or in some way by 
the music that man has made!” 


Tom Doyle 


McCartney Ш Imagined is 
available digitally now. Physical 
formats ‘follow in July. 


Paul McCartney helps # 


out гетіхегѕ Idris 


Elba (below) and 
Khruangbin. 


ON 


Mary McCartney, Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP/Shutterstock 





WHYNOW.CO.UK/LISTEN 








RADIO 





MOJO RISING 


Welcome to the world: 
the finally-arrived 
Declan O’ Rourke. 


1 

ол TT 

= Zu hl 
M Г: 


ү 


MASTERSTORYTELLER 


AND OVERNIGHT 
SENSATION - AT LAST! 


6 6 D ECLAN'S AMASTER storyteller. 
He will put you in that place. You 
will see the picture, feel the 

wind, smell the sea breeze. You'll be totally 

involved." Says one of Irish singer-songwriter 

Declan O'Rourke's biggest fans: Paul Weller. 

Weller has been friends with O'Rourke 
since they were both signed to V2 in the early 
2000s, when the Irishman’s 2004 debut 
album, Since Kyabram, went double platinum 
in his native country. Since then, wider 
success has eluded O'Rourke outside of 
Ireland, and he's well aware of his long, slow 
arcto worldwide overnight sensation. 

“I’ve been toying with the idea of a song 
about that,” he laughs. "Something like, ‘If it 
takes me half as long to be an overnight 
forgotten I'll be doing all right" 

O'Rourke is one of those songwriter's 


storyteller, historian, late night 
emotional confidante and setter 
of the world to rights. He's also an 
exceptional guitarist, a gifted 
fingerpicker with a complex 
percussive style to rival Michael 
Chapman or John Martyn. Again, 
Weller is effusive with praise for his 
friend's abilities. "He's a stunning 
guitar player, just ridiculous, like he's 
playing two or three parts at the 
same time." 

O’Rourke himself has an unlikely 
theory about his playing. "I first 
expected to be a drummer, loved 
playing drums, so if I have a style at 
all it's down to a percussive element 


from those days – l'm a drummer trapped 


! Chronicles Of The 








For fans of 
John Martyn, Joni 
Mitchell, Michael 
Chapman, Paul Brady. 

O'Rourke's debut 
Since Kyabram is 
titled in reference to 
the Australian town 
his family moved to 
when he was 10. He 
returned to Dublin to 
build a music career. 

History plays 
à huge part in 
O'Rourke's lyrics, 
particularly on his 
last album, 2017's 
self-explanatory 


Great Irish Famine. 
The singer only 
reads non-fiction: 
“Why make up 
stories when there's 
so much to learn 
from what's already 
happened?" 

The epic Arrivals 
track Convict Ways 
was written for a 
festival in Australia 
celebrating the 
150th anniversary of 
the final convict ship 
to the former penal 
colony. In it he draws 
parallels with the 
current Australian 
government's 
policy on refugee 
internment. "You'd 
think a nation with 
Australia's white 
origins might be more 
open to the plight of 
displaced people." 


In Painters’ Light 

The Harbour 

This Thing That 
We Share 








around the world without seeing 
much net gain. Eventually, he 
realised, “I could keep holding onto 
the pie, but it was a small pie". With 
a support team now in place, 
O'Rourke decided this was the time 
to work with a producer, so he 
texted his friend: "Have you ever 
produced anyone else?” 

“To be fair,” he says, “Paul didn’t 
jump right in, he wanted to hear 
the songs first, see if there was 
anything he could add.” And add 
Weller did, literally getting 
hands-on and providing the piano 
on gossamer smoky jazz club tune 
This Thing That We Share, the 
album’s closing track (hear it on this 
month’s Weller-curated MOJO CD). 

One person not on the album, 
however, is O’Rourke’s cellist wife, 
Eimear O'Grady. They first met 
when playing a session for the 
same band, but these days O’Grady 
mainly works asa TV stuntwoman. 
“Paul kept saying we should get her 


in to play, but in these Covid days her career is 


Lawrence Watson 


songwriters who picks up celebrity fans like 
glitter on a glue gun. Weller, the late John 
Prine, Paul Casey, Glen Hansard and others 
have all sung the praises of this poetic 


24 MOJO 


in the body of a guitar player." 

Until new album Arrivals, O'Rourke had 
been obsessively independent, acting as his 
own manager, agent, tour manager, producer 
-a true one-man band flogging himself 


far busier than mine, and someone has to stay 
home to watch our three-year-old.” 
If Arrivals changes O'Rourke's fortunes, they 
may soon be paying for alot more childcare. 
Andy Fyfe 


S.J.M. CONCERTS PRESENTS 


ғ THE INTERFERENCE (OF LIGHT) TOUR 


OCTOBER 2021 
MON 11 GLA | 
GALVANIZERS SWG3 
TUE EDINBURGH 

aes um ROOM 
SAT NE TLE UNIVERSITY 
MON HULL ae 
TUE SHEFFIELD LEADMILL 
WED р ER O2 RITZ 
FRI LIVER OL 

O2 ACADEMY 
SAT CARDIFF IUE 


MON SIR j 
O2 IN ST ITUTE 
TUE LONDON 
O2 SHEPHERDS 
BUS H = MPIR E. 
TH U РАЛЛИ 
FRI 
02 ACAD EM 
SAT BRISTOL = 
E М М5 о № ROC о uc 
SUN ОСИ 
T TH E FO U ND RY 


GIGSANDTOURS.COM 
eee w. 


AN SJM, METROPOLIS MUSIC, DI 
MCD & THINK ORCHARD PRESEN 
ASSOCIATION WITH CAA 


SJM CONCERTS, DFC & MCD BY ARRANGEMENT WITH SOLO & РКОММ PRESENT 


PLUS VERY SPECIAL GUESTS 


Pa 


LEEDS FIRST DIRECT ARENA MN. 


BIRMINGHAM UTILITA ARENA 


CARDIFF MOTORPOINT ARENA 


GLASGOW THE SSE HYDRO 


DUBLIN 3ARENA 


&oLp OUT 


SIM Concerts & DF by arrangement with Paradigm presents 


= 
— = 


Fri 11 February 2022 
CARDIFF 
UNIVERSITY 
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com TOUR ANNOUNCEMENTS & PRIORITY BOOKING 





A WALK ON GUILDED 
SPLINTERS WITH 
THE 


B 


ACK IN the summer of 2019, Paul Weller 
invited Liverpool group The Mysterines 
to duet on a live version of Dr. John's 
1968 track | Walk On Guilded Splinters. It had 
been a brave move of Weller to tackle The 
Doctor’s voodoo incantation back in 1995, 
but dial up the more recent performance on 
YouTube and Mysterines singer Lia Metcalfe, 
18 at the time, seems totally unfazed as she 
breathes new fire into the song. It’s all Weller 
can do not to stand back and admire. 

"Lia's got a strong 
personality and great stage 
presence, and it's nice 
-and | don't mean this in a 
patronising way – to hear a 
young woman with that sort 
of ballsy voice,” recalls Weller, 
who also invited Metcalfe to 
feature on True, a track on his 
new album, Fat Pop: Volume 1. 

"You'll hear itin R&B maybe 
but not so much in rock or 
pop. She's untamed." 

It's a kind of untamed, raw power that's 
ignited the clutch of tracks The Mysterines 
have put out to date. On songs such as last 
year's pile-driving Queens Of The Stone 
Age-like Who's Ur Girl or the joyous, 
Ramonesy rattle of Gasoline, the band 
- Metcalfe, plus bassist George Favager, 
guitarist Callum Thompson and drummer 
Paul Crilly - alchemise fuzztoned garage rock 
into something that feels fresh, electrifying 
and vital. At least to our ears... 

"| don't really like our earlier stuff,” groans 
Metcalfe, taking a break outside Assault And 
Battery Studios in west London, where the 
band are finishing their debut album, due on 
the Fiction label in 2020. “I wrote 
those songs when I was 14 then 
released them when | was 16. 
| didn't identify with them at 
that point, so now I'm 20 it 
feels worlds away." 

Metcalfe's father was 
the frontman in early 2000s 








The Mysterines 
(from left) Callum 


Thompson, Lia 
Metcalfe, George 
Favager, Paul Crilly. | 

































indie rockers Sound Of Guns and would play 
her contemporary bands such as The Strokes, 
The White Stripes and Black Rebel Motorcycle 
Club when she was barely out of nappies. 

It all fed in, and by the age of eight she 

had started writing her own songs, was 

soon playing open mike nights and had 
formed The Mysterines while she was 

still in school. 

“| had no interest in going to house 

parties. Once you've been to one you've 
been to them all - someone 
throws up on themselves, 
someone gets threatened 
with a knife. | would much 
rather be out playing with 
other bands," she recalls of 
spending herteens climbing 
into a van and playing gigs. 
There are parallels with 
her sharp-suited benefactor's 
early career there, as there is 
in the band's refusal to stand 
still creatively. The rough 
mixes of The Mysterines' new material that 
MOJO hears show Metcalfe's songwriting has 
indeed leapfrogged their recent output by a 
distance. Reflecting a current listening diet 
that includes Tom Waits, Billie Eilish and "a 
lot" of Nick Cave, there's gnarled, Stooges-in- 
the-Mojave desert blues (Dangerous), 
pummelling grunge (Hung Up) and, on the 
sunset warmth of On The Run, the freewheel- 
ing ease of Tom Petty. 

“The album's pretty much done. | just 
want to play these songs live now. I'm getting 
pretty bored, l've started watching Come 
Dine With Me," says Metcalfe, taking a final 
pull on her cigarette before heading back 

into the studio. 
She laughs. "I'll 
probably end 


For fans of: 


| Queens Of The Stone 
up hating Age, P.J. Harvey, 
these ones Arctic Monkeys, 
as well..." Screaming Trees. 
Chris Mid M 
avager formed the 
Catchpole band at school and 
have been through a 


variety of personnel 
changes since. "The 
band is definitely at 
its pinnacle in terms 
ofthe line-up now 
— 50 l'm not going to 
sack anyone!" 

The Mysterines 
are currently 
wrapping up their 
debut album at Alan 
Moulder and Flood's 
studio, Assault And 
Battery, with 
Australian producer/ 
engineer Catherine 
Marks (Wolf Alice, 
The Big Moon, Alanis 
Morissette). 


Love's Not Enough 
Gasoline 
Who's Ur Girl 








MOJO PLAYLI zu 


EN 





BILLY F GIBBONS 

With drums loaned from Walk, Don't Run, 
the 'Top's psych connoisseur testifies about 
heading to the coast for some "champagne 
and a little bit of weed", to serious twang. 
Find it: YouTube 


ARO00J AFTAB 

An incredible singer from New York's 
jazz/experimental scene, Aftab turns a 
Pakistani classical ghazal into glimmering 
baroque folk akin to Joanna Newsom. 
Find it: Bandcamp 


MOLLY LEWIS 











As-seen-on-the-'net Australian 
Lewis ("the human Theremin") 
uses her lithe, melodic whistle to 
Martin Denny-esque effect on sultry exotica. 
Find it: YouTube 


CHEMICAL BROTHERS 





Part private psychedelic reel and part zero- 
hour anthem, the Chems' new single sets 
down gently and blasts off into ecstatic disco 
abandon, with spookily soothing vox. 

Find it: streaming services 


СД Greg Cartwright, the man who 
æ] does write them like they used 

to, gets his band's Memphis 

line-up БУС together for a pop-soul heart- 

breaker for melancholy wine drinkers. 

Find it: streaming services 





VIRNA LINDT 

Stockholm's glamorous spy/1982 indie 
chart-topper back with eight minutes of polar 
disco tinged by remembrance and regret. 
Find it: YouTube 


EL NINO DIABLO 

Minimal but spiritually ecstatic, this 
Berlin electronicist brings jazzy buoyancy to 
an ambient track on new EP, Dreamweaving. 
Find it: Bandcamp 





LONELADY 


| The medieval memento mori 

+ meets early-'80s, nerve-baring 
electro in the Hacienda for Julie 
Campbell's first single in six years. Piquant! 
Find it: streaming services 


ERLAND COOPER 


Fans of EC's Orkney-inspired mood include 
MOJO editor Weller and Ryder-Jones, who 
mixes this Skule Skerry track to its bare bones. 
Find it: YouTube 


MARISA ANDERSON & 
WILLIAM TYLER 


Serene conflab between two latter-day guitar 
maestros. Hard to imagine an instrumental 
about crushed hopes could sound so pretty. 
Find it: Bandcamp 


Blain Clausen 





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benefits of your 
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THE MOJO INTERVIEW 








Sidewoman, shredder, 


superstar — St. Vincent 1s the 
21st century transformer 


whose new album throws funky 





"7Os shapes while singing of 
her jailbird dad. But what else 
lies behind her many masks? 
“I could be anybody today, 
admits Annie Clark. 


Interview by VICTORIA SEGAL • Portrait by ZACKERY MICHAEL 





Cassavetes movie or Candy Darling,” says Clark, explaining the 

inspirations behind the rebrand that heralds St. Vincent’s sixth 

album, Daddy’s Home. “Glamour that’s been awake for two days.” 
Where its predecessor was high in sheen and concept, Daddy’s 


and out” mood she sought was hardly a reach, 
given the times: “I was just watching a lot of 
institutions that people formerly trusted 
crumble,” Clark says. “In America, seeing the 
veneer fall off a lot of things, just watching a lot 
of pillars fall, brick by brick.” 

Since her 2007 debut Marry Me, she has 
displayed a gift for transformation; prostheti- 
cally-altered David Byrne collaborator on 
2012’s Love This Giant; smoke-haired cult 
2 leader on 2014's St. Vincent; Masseduction’s AI 
я dominatrix. “I think that all this stuff is inside 


Vincent's Styling by Avigail Collins; Hair: Pamela Neal; Make up: Hinako Nishiguchi 


NNIE CLARK HAS SLIPPED INTO SOME- 
thing more comfortable. The pink latex 
bodysuits and thigh-high boots she wore for 
St. Vincent's last album, 2017’s Masseduction, 
have been mothballed: new photographs show 
maroon flares, a robe, tousled blonde hair, all 
shot against the beaux-arts-meets-Skid-Row backdrop of 
downtown Los Angeles' Barclay Hotel. *Gena Rowlands in a John 


Home is rich in oil-crisis style, morning-after experience; love and 
its compromises; what it takes to hang on as the world falls apart. 

Family and its legacies also feature: the album's title partly refers to 
her father's decade in prison for *white-collar crime". The *down 





WE'RE NOT WORTHY 






David Byrne's unsure. 


"St. Vincent remains a mys- 
‚ tery and enigma to me. 

& We've made a record 
together, toured together 
and remain good friends 

- but who is she? We get a 
glimpse [on the acoustic 
version of Masseduction]. But mostly we are 
mesmerized and inspired. The mystery acts 


Gm т = 













Who is Annie Clark? Even | 











as a mirror to see not Annie but ourselves.” 


of me so it doesn't feel like a character,” she says. “It just feels like 
you have a big mixing board on your personality and you turn some 
things up and turn other things down. I like reinventing myself. It 
feels thrilling to me, really. Like, I could be anybody today." 

Right now, working on a bass line in her LA studio, she's very 
much the modern musician. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1982 to 
a social worker mother and “lapsed Catholic" father, Clark moved 
to Dallas, Техаз with her mother and sisters (she has eight siblings 
across her blended family) after her parents divorced. She studied 
at Boston's Berklee College Of Music, served with The Polyphonic 
Spree and Sufjan Stevens' touring band before her own debut. 
Since then, she's established herself as both polymath and 
polymorph, a virtuoso guitarist who can sing with Swans and write 
for Taylor Swift, front Nirvana at their 2014 Rock and Roll Hall of 
Fame induction and play at 2020's Grammy Salute To Prince. She 
produced Sleater-Kinney's 2019 album The Center Won't Hold 


(drawing criticism from some of the band's 
fans over the extent of her influence), directed 
2017 horror short The Birthday Party and 
co-wrote forthcoming mockumentary 

The Nowhere Inn with Sleater-Kinney's 
Carrie Brownstein. 

Between 2014 and 2016, Clark even 
skirted tabloid celebrity when she dated 
actress/model Cara Delevingne, yet her 
mystery remains unhacked and even her 
rawest, most emotional songs refuse to give 
much away. “Ме І never cried,” she sings > 


MOJO 29 


Courtesy St. Vincent, Alamy, Getty (6), Sarah Cass 


50 MOJO 


< ona new one, The Melting Of The Sun. 
“То tell the truth I lied." 

So then, asks MOJO, who is Annie 
Clark today? 


With Masseduction, the title track's lyric – 
"| can't turn off what turns me on" - set the 
record's agenda. Did you have a similar 
mission statement for this album? 


Yeah, | did. | was talking to my friend Jack 
Antonoff who | co-produced the record with. 

| remember being at Electric Lady studios in 
downtown New York and | just wanted to feel 
down and out downtown. Down and out. | could 
picture the colour palette. | wanted to tell real 
dirty romantic stories. Crazy romantic stories. 


Where did that desire come from? 


| think part of it was that in the [autumn] of 
2019 my dad got out of prison after 10 years. 
That's why | called the record Daddy’s Home 
and | got to write about it in the song Daddy's 
Home. was just going back to a lot of the 
music that he loved and that he showed me as 
a kid. Probably the music | have listened to 
more in my entire life is stuff from '71 to '75. It's 
wavy and it's loose and very much about the 
performance; if you get the moment, great 

— it’s not about perfection and high-gloss. | 
was, “Oh | love this stuff. | think | could tell my 
story in this way, through this lens." | can tell 
stories that are dark and sad and funny, and 
darkly funny, and about imperfect people 
living imperfect lives. 


So the line in Daddy’s Home - "I signed 
autographs in the visitation room" - is true? 


Yes. And when you go to visit, you can't bring 
cell phones in and do selfies or anything like 
that, but | would sign a Target receipt or 
something. Obviously, it was very dark but | 
also thought it was hilarious. And | would brag 
to my sisters that | was the real belle of the ball 
at this particular prison. 


Is ita tribute to your dad? 


Oh, | wouldn't go that far (laughs). | don't think 
people should get tributes unless they die. 
When we die, we're all saints. We're all pillars of 
the community after we die. But no. 


Your third album, 2011's Strange Mercy, 
dealt with your father's imprisonment more 
obliquely - what allowed you to write about 
it explicitly now? 


So much has changed in 10 years. When you 
become parent to your parent or your roles 
have reversed, it's like, l'm kind of Daddy now. 
| feel very like that particular title is applicable 
to how | feel personally and also the nod to my 
dad actually coming out of the clink. So it's a 
lot of things for me. | think | feel OK talking 
about it because the children - his kids, of 
which there are many - everyone's of age and 
in a place with it. | have a good relationship 
with him. A very funny relationship but a good 
one. He's a big music fan, so yeah - | think he's 
thrilled to have a record at least in some ways 
named in reference to him. 


One of the first things you wanted to learn 
to play on the guitar was Jethro Tull's 
Aqualung - where did that come from? 


| think that was my dad's CD. | saw Jethro Tull 
three times. Tull - three times! My first concert 
was Steely Dan. | was never cool. But a lot of 
that - Crosby, Stills, Nash And Young, Neil 
Young, The Doors, Zeppelin, Steely Dan, The 
Crusaders, Herbie Hancock, Traffic - all that stuff 
would have been my dad's influence, | guess. 
How many times have you seen Tull, hmm? 


Were they not a bit alarming for a child? 


If l'm honest, | don't love the flute - it ranks 

as one of my least favourite instruments. 

| didn't know that at the time. | didn't 
understand the novelty of just how brave 

he Пап Anderson] was to bring the flute into 
prog rock. When you're going back and raiding 
the boomer record collection you don't have 


A LIFE IN PICTURES 2 





Visions of St. Vincent: Clark on camera. A 
















Annie get your axe: in 
Dallas, young guitar-slinger 
Clark perfects the Aqualung riff. 





On a Polyphonic Spree: 

Clark (far left) behind Tim 
DeLaughter, Hollywood Bowl, 
2005. “The chaos, it’s hot, 
sweaty, and unpredictable.” 


A Modest Proposal: 2007 
press shot as St. Vincent's 
debut LP Marry Me is released. 





“The biggest rush in the 

world”: St. V puts 
herself in peril, Way 
Out West festival, 
Gothenburg, Sweden, 
August 2012. 


“He can channel 

that manic ecstatic 
better than anyone”. 
With David Byrne at 
Bonnaroo, June 2013. 


Model couple: with 
Cara Delevingne 
(left) at London Fashion 
Week, Kensington 

Gardens, 2015. 


With Sleater- 

Kinney’s Carrie 
Brownstein (left) in 
2014, NYC. St. Vincent 


would produce 2019's The 
Center Won't Hold: "The work 
| am super-proud of... 

| loved that band." 


With Jack Antonoff, co- 
producer of Masseduction, 
at the 61st Grammys, Los 
Angeles, 2019. 


Welcome to the Slow Disco: 

St. Vincent at the, Austin 
City Limits Festival, Texas, 2018, 
"fighting the good fight." 


the same concepts as they do. "Oh, so-and-so 
was just a so-and-so rip off, these people are 
corny" — it's all just exploration for you. It's 
nice with virgin ears. 


You've said there's a Stevie Wonder 
influence on Daddy's Home - was that from 
your father too? 


| knew the sort of young Stevie Wonder era but 
actually it was right after 9/11 - which was my 
first or second day at college - and my friend 
was like, "Just go deep on Innervisions.” And 

| was like, "Woah, OK." So it was music that 
helped me deal with the depth of what was 
going on. That was when | really got into 
Innervisions, Talking Book, Songs In The Key 

Of Life, that particular era of Stevie Wonder 
that was super-heavy. 


How about Sly Stone? 


| knew the hits growing up and then dug in 
around the same time and went back and 
revisited it recently. Checked out the Long 
Beach sound and bands like War. Super 
groove-based but with other influences 
whether Latin or, like, wiggly stuff. No straight 
lines. No right angles at all. Groove and feel 
are like a house of cards. It's like this 

elusive magic trick. 


You were into theatre at high school - 
is that where you learned to become 
a performer? 


It was something that really scared me but 

| got such a thrill out of it. Let me make a 
distinction: | wasn't into musical theatre. | was, 
like, reading Ibsen. | wasn't trying to be the 
lead in Hello, Dolly! Musical theatre, | didn't 
understand - | was like, "Why would you break 
into song right now?" | loved David Mamet. 


What were your signature roles? 


| had a progressive theatre teacher who 
changed one of the roles in Our Town to 
a female role so | could have a part. | think 


| had about four lines and most of it was to 
look forlorn, which wasn't that hard as a teen. 
And then | was Helen Keller's mother in 

The Miracle Worker. 


You went on to study at Berklee College Of 
Music but did you ever play in a guitar-bass- 
drums school band? 


| did a bit. | played in bands in high school 

and we'd do Jewel covers and such. Then | 
begrudgingly played in a jam band in high 
school. And then in college | played in a noise 
band that was very Polvo, all those Sonic Youth 
kind of noise bands with detuned 

guitars. It was really fun. | was doing my 

own solo stuff in the midst of all this. 

Writing at least. 


Can you remember the first songs 
you wrote? 


One of the first things | wrote | ended 

up using on the song Saviour [on 
Masseduction] – l'm picturing pressing 

play and record at the same time on 

the Tascam 4-track. | don't remember 

exactly the first thing | wrote, but | do 
remember that | would learn other 

people's songs and then about 

three-quarters of the way through I 

would immediately start trying to write 

my own things. l've never been that 

great a student, | guess. | think instinct can take 
you a lot of great places but at a certain point, 
if you want to keep trying to get better, you do 
just have to go back and figure out: "OK, this 
song is great. Why is it great?" Take it apart like 
a frog in biology. It's not the sexiest part, but | 
just find it crazy, endlessly fascinating. 


Do you think you've written a standard? 


A song like What Me Worry? [on Marry Me] 
was literally inspired by the Great American 
Songbook. Maybe my song New York [on 
Masseduction] can go into the canon of songs 
about New York. It's a little bit of a hard sell 


with the word “motherfucker” in it, but who 
knows? Maybe that would play in 2040, 2050. 
The obscenity won't matter. Nobody will care. 


There's a song on the new album named 
after Warhol Superstar Candy Darling. 
When you moved to New York after 
college, were you in thrall to that Warhol 
idea of the city? 


Yeah, | think New York is full of people who 
have escaped from wherever they've come 
from, unless they were born there. It's still my 
favourite city and | still have so much more of 


"I saw Jethro Tull 
three times. Tull - 
three times! My 
first concert was 
oteely Dan. I was 


never cool." 


a romantic relationship with New York than any 
other place. | moved there just after college. 
When | was in college, | would escape Boston 
and go on the Chinatown bus for $15 and go 
to the city for the weekend. Hoped I'd find 

a place to stay and run around and be drunk 
and see shows. Every single block of down- 
town has memories - good, bad, ugly, fuzzy - 
and you're alive in that place more than other 
places. That's my experience and | know I'm 
not alone. [Candy Darling] was just so 
beautiful and singular and funny and | feel 
kind of a perfect heroine. 


On returning to Texas, you were invited to 


join The Polyphonic Spree - how was that as 
a learning experience? 


| always wanted to be essentially doing what | 
am doing now but it was so exciting to go from 
playing little clubs to — | think my first gig with 
them was at a Spanish festival called Benicas- 
sim. It was like, the elevator doors opened and 
there were like 40,000 people. The chaos, it's 
hot and sweaty, and there's just that unpredict- 
able 'What's going to happen next? Am | going 
to hop on top of a road case and be wheeled 
all over the stage?' We were mostly on the bill 
with Sonic Youth and the stuff that was big in 
those days. Franz Ferdinand was really 
big, Kaiser Chiefs, The Bravery - are all 
these things ringing bells? Jet was one 
of the big headliners. 


Beyond music, what did you learn 
from watching other bands on the 
festival circuit? Any cautionary tales? 


One thing that | think of is when | see 
people with really massive entourages. 
| know it maybe seems sexy from the 
outside but you're paying for all that. 

| mean, don't go bankrupt 'cos you're 
bringing your entourage around. 


David Byrne, whom you collaborated 

with on 2012's Love This Giant, has 

spoken of you having ‘mystery’ - "not 
a bad thing for a beautiful, talented young 
woman (or man) to embrace." Has ‘mystery’ 
been useful to you? 


| don't think it's something that | actively, 
calculatedly set out to cultivate. | like being 
able to go creatively any place that | want. And 
| like that fans seem comfortable with that as 
well and that they've given me the leeway. 

| appreciate that vote of confidence and that 
secret pact that we make. 


What did you take from working 
with Byrne? 


One of the things | loved about David > 








<< when we were writing that record is that 
whatever he did there was a full commitment 
- even if he was mumbling, didn't have 
concrete lyrics, was just trying out a melody 
or a feeling. And I think that's why he can 
channel that manic ecstatic better than any- 
one else. But | got to see the sketches of that 
and it's just full commitment, no judgement, 
try it out, throw it out and then refine, refine, 
refine. And knowing when to step away. 
Like, making sure your refinement doesn't 
turn into neutering. 


Love This Giant looks like a dividing line in 
your career; it seemed to shake something 
loose. Did you feel like a different kind of 
artist after that? 


| think it's sort of hard to know. | think that 
the record | made just after David [2014's St. 
Vincent] was a record written on the high of 
those shows and that tour and kind of 


$2 MOJO 


“Т was in a very low place, late 2016, early 2017. I had 
this incredibly rigid life so that I could hold on." 


touching that ecstasy a little bit. But as for the 
rest, | don't even know. | have no idea. 


You said that around St. Vincent you wanted 
to look like an alien because you felt like an 
alien. Where did that come from? 


| don't know, | think | maybe felt a bit 
misunderstood in life. | just felt a little ill at ease, 
| felt confrontational, | felt just probably a bit 
angry. | don't walk around feeling misunder- 
stood, but | think in some ways | was coming 
from a very humble 'Let's grab a guitar and 
throw it in the back of the minivan' - this very 
DIY, kinda scrappy thing. а never really played 
physically with the idea of identity - Га played 
with it lyrically, l'd played with it in music, 

but ГА never gone, "I want to do a physical 
transformation, I'm tired of being this. | don't 
want to be this any more. | don't want to bea 
sweet, curly-headed ingénue. Fuck that. | want 
to be a space alien. | want to be on some other 








planet." So | just kind of went there. | don't 
know exactly why | was there but | felt | wanted 
my outside to look like what my inside looked 
like which was, like, other. Freak, queer, other. 


Did it achieve what you wanted? 


Even just walking down the street with grey 
hair and bleached eyebrows looking strung 
out - like yeah, that person is going to be 
received differently than whatever | had 
been previously. | do think | wanted to be 
more confrontational. 


Your live shows for St. Vincent were 
extremely physical - was there ever a 
moment where you came round on-stage 
and thought, "I don't know how to get out 
of this, l've gone too far"? 


| put myself in peril before when | was doing 
the Strange Mercy tour. | would crowdsurf — 
which was the biggest rush in the world. With 


Zackery Michael 


“I will always find something 
to be sad about”: St. Vincent 
catches up on the funny 
pages, Barclay Hotel, 

Los Angeles, 2020. 


isa. 





the St. Vincent show it started off pretty 
composed but as we did more and more and 

| was just touring so much, I was truly out of my 
mind. Those shows became more outlandish. 
Climbing scaffolding, 20, 30 feet up in the air. 

| was climbing speakers - | almost seriously 
hurt myself a couple of times. | mean, | was 

out of my mind. (Laughs) Of my mind. That was 
a wild time of life. | was crispy from the road. 

| was absolutely feral. 


How do you view that period now? 


| don't look back on it with regret. | do look 
back on it and go, "Oh man, | wonder why the 
people who were helping me with my career 
at that time didn't say, 'Hey, let's slow down." 
You know, "Let's take these couple weeks off." 
| didn't have support in that regard. | do 
wonder why people who could have, didn't - 
but | don't have those people in my life any 
more. | do look back at pictures, like, "Oh man, 
| look almost dead. Who's that person?" 


So the rigidity of Masseduction was a 
specific response to that? 


Yes. | was in a very low place, late 2016, early 
2017. | was in a very low place and | got 


physically sick. It was a stomach issue which 
was sort of elusive, | never did find out exactly 
what it was. l'm sure it was just stress but it 
became hard to eat. It was like my body just 
said, 'OK, you're going to go on a complete 
reset.’ | was sick, so | stopped eating certain 
things that seemed to exacerbate the sickness 
and | stopped drinking anything and | had this 
incredibly rigid life so that | could hold on. And 
the thing that was keeping me holding on was 
making the record, making the show, seeing 
the fans, just... doing the thing. In a way, | was 
incredibly strict with my mind. | was strict with 
my body. was strict in a lot of ways with the 
music - that's why | think it's angular, it's 
jagged, it's angry, it's abrasive. | was holding 
on for dear life. Part of the outfits were like 
'stress position' [ie. a stance inflicted on 
prisoners as a type of torture] - everything 
about it was, how free can you be in this 
confined outfit and these shoes that hurt? 
And if it doesn't hurt, you're doing something 
wrong. Which is just very... Catholic (laughs). 


St. Vincent: three steps to art- 
pop heaven by Victoria Segal. 


St. Vincent 
Actor 
KKKK 


(4AD, 2009) 


Action! After the charming 
antique pop and CGI folk of 

| Marry Me, Actor pushed 

| St. Vincent onto a bigger, 
DEM ! grander stage. Clark drew 
(СМЕ heavily on Disney themes and 
vintage film music as inspiration for her 
second record, but turned them into 
soundtracks of anxiety and alienation, Black 
Rainbow's Holst-like explosions and Laughing 
With A Mouth Of Blood's delicate disturbances 
proving that she was following her own script. 






St. Vincent 
SH wien 
ЖЖЖЖ 


(LOMA VISTA, 2014) 


Starting with Rattlesnake, a 
song about an ill-advised 
naked ramble in the desert, 
St. Vincent's fourth album is a 
pivotal moment in Annie 
Clark's evolution. Here is 
where she threw off any lingering 'singer- 
songwriter' constraints to become a glorious 
full-blown pop star courtesy of Digital Witness, 
Birth In Reverse ("Oh what an ordinary day/ 
Take out the garbage, masturbate") and a wild 
new level of guitar hero abandon. 





St. Vincent 
Masseduction 


ЖЖЖЖ Ж 


(LOMA VISTA, 2017) 


"At times like needles through 
your eyes... a pretty 
aggressive record," says Clark 
now, but Masseduction proved 
irresistible, transgressive, 
ИШИННЕН Satirical and, in the wake of 
her relationship with model Cara Delevingne, 
unabashedly emotional. In 2018, Clark 
re-recorded it as piano album MassEducation 
"to just connect completely with the lyrics". 
Proving the songs' resilience, there was 

also a remix album, Nina Kravitz Presents 
Masseduction Rewired. You can't turn off 

what turns you on. 





Are there people you see as role models? 


The people м/һо really love and admire are 
people who have been writers for a long time 
and who are still continuing to get better as 
writers and are pushing and never get 
complacent. That's Nick [Cave]. Bowie made 
one of his best records ever the year that he 
was dying. Lana Del Rey has always been a 
great writer but gets better and better. A lot 
of times, the trajectory for people can be that 
they do something really great that's popular 
and then maybe they do something that's less 
great but even more popular. The something 
great and the amount of exposure it gets is 
not necessarily correlated. 


You took your name from a line in Nick 
Cave's There She Goes, My Beautiful World 
- have you met him? 


Yeah, a little bit. Nick and Susie Cave are, in my 
experience, just lovely. Absolutely. And Warren 
Ellis | know a little bit and he's just a dream. | was 
at the same studio working with Jack [Antonoff] 
and Warren and Nick were mixing their last 
record [Ghosteen]. Warren came in and played 
a couple of mixes. He played me that fantastical 
song about the ponies with fiery manes 
running down the mountainside [Bright Horses]. 
| just silently wept because it's so beautiful. 


How about kindred spirits, community? 


| didn't know Sophie [Scottish musician/ 
producer who died in January] but | was a fan. 
And even if | didn't know Sophie, you feel 

a kinship with musicians who are all just kind 
of fighting the good fight and it's really sad 
when somebody goes down. You feel sort of 
a kinship and a camaraderie, I think. 


In The Melting Of The Sun on Daddy's Home, 
you namecheck a string of female musicians: 
Tori Amos, Nina Simone, "St Joni"... 


They're all women whose work! love and the 
song is about the way in which the world failed 
them at these particular times. Joni's a genius 
and | don't know if enough people say that 
about her and | suspect that that's because 
she's a woman. To me, the Joni records that 
really just shatter me are definitely Hejira and 
Don Juan's Reckless Daughter - my God. And 
Court And Spark. 


Would you like to do more production? 

You produced Sleater-Kinney's The Center 
Won't Hold in 2019, the last record drummer 
Janet Weiss made with the group before 
leaving amid controversy over their 

change of direction. 


| would like to do more of it. That's a great 
record. I’m really proud of it. A couple of 
unfortunate events coloured its reception and 
added up to a very skewed narrative about 
that particular record but the work itself | am 
super-proud of. And I loved them - | loved that 
band. | think again with the drummer leaving 
at a specific time it created a whole lot of 
hubbub or chaos or perceived acrimony when 
there was none. People were pretty happy to 
jump on to the dramatic part of it. But for the 
people who actually lived it... People love to 
couch things in really moralistic terms and that 
doesn't really allow for how complex the world 
actually is. We're living in The Crucible. 


Did you feel personally attacked? 


| mean - who cares? It's a record that we're all 
proud of and I think time will be kind to it. 


Are you in a good place now? 


It's like my best friend says, | will always find 
something to be sad about. But yeeeaah... 
yeah. It's good enough. The people | love are 
still alive. | don't know, a good place sounds 
boring, doesn't it? | kind of have to push 
over the applecart every few years. 


MOJO 33 


“| never could have dreamt what 
was to come”: Mahamadou 
Moctar Souleymane (centre) 

with band members (from 

left) Souleymane Ibrahim, 

Mikey Coltun and Ahmoudou 
Madassane; (inset, below) 

“| didn’t know America had 
musicians who were so talented.” 








is the 
next-gen Desert Blues 
wiz with the Prince-like 
energy and film star 
charisma. But the 
Nigerien's axe pyro- 
technics might never 
have ignited without 
some bicycle brake 
cables and a sardine 
tin. “What’s this word, 
‘psychedelic’?” he asks 






























Photography by 


WAS IN THE DESERT MOUNTAINS IN SPAIN THE FIRST TIME I HEARD 
G G Jimi Hendrix. Was it 2014? It was a long journey and our driver put on Hey Joe. 





I was sleeping and suddenly I woke up. It nearly made me sick, just how incred- 
ible it was. At first, I thought it must have been a Tuareg playing because it was 





very similar... I didn't know America had any musicians who were so talented." 

Reclining against his bed, Mahamadou Moctar Souleymane, AKA Mdou 

Moctar, the hottest shredder in the Sahara, the Tuareg currently taking the 

desert blues deeper into space than anyone else has yet dared, is reminiscing quietly while children 

run freely around the room. Not his. This, he'll explain, is standard Tuareg life wherever you are: if 
you go to someone's place, make yourself at home, tea will be served and guitars produced. 

Home is Agadez in Niger. Catch a flight to the capital, Niamey, via Paris, Istanbul or 
Casablanca; then grab a bus for the 28-hour drive into the emptiness. “It’s three to a seat,” says 
American bass player Mikey Coltun, who has just returned to New York after recording 
Moctar's latest album, Afrique Victime in situ. “There are animals on the bus, people in the 
aisles. They fit a lot of luggage underneath and on the roof, but your bags and guitars are on 
your lap." As you travel through the endless brown, keep an eye out for the site of the Tree of 
Tenéré, the world's most remote tree and a rare clue to the Sahara’s previous life, more than 
6,000 years ago, as woodland (sadly, said tree was mown down by a drunk Libyan lorry driver 
in 1973), and the Grand Mosque, at 90ft the world's tallest mud minaret. 

There's not a great deal beyond Agadez. The uranium mines that make ownership of Tuareg 
territory hotly disputed in Niger. An American drone base, keeping an eye on insurgent 2— 


MOJO 35 


“No Tuareg had ever made this 
kind of music”: Moctar on-stage 
at Festival D’Eté Québec, 
Canada, July 2019; (below right) 


the band saddle ир (from left) 
Ibrahim, Coltun, Moctar and 


Madassane (insets, from top) 
Mdou Moctar on film and album. 


“Т 





> 


Getty, WH Moustapha (4), Jerome Fino, Chris Kirkle 


AND AMERICA. 


787 


HAVE BEEN TO EUROPE 


OURS IS ON 
SLEEPING WELL 
AND EATING WELL." 


<< activity in the dunes. Head north on the RN25 — 
which, as highways go, is more concept than physical 
reality — and eventually you will reach Algeria. Libya is 
away to the northeast. Agadez is known regionally 
as a smuggling hub, but also for the finest meat 
in West Africa. Ask at the bus station for the best 
restaurant in town and you may be directed to a 
tiny shack where the black-eyed peas cooked in oil 
with tomato and onions are heavenly. It's also a 
great spot to meet Moctar — it's his favourite place 
to eat and, having rented out his car to raise a little 
money while Covid-19 puts the squeeze on what 
had been a 170-gig-a-vear habit, he can't travel 
very far from home right now. 

“This all started in 2003, when I was 17 and | 
just finished school," says the guitarist. “Га been 
working for a drilling company in Libya, but it was a terrible life and 
I decided to come home and focus on music. My parents were 
against me becoming an artist but I had made my own guitar, using 
bicycle brake cables, some wood and the keys from a sardine tin, 
and had learnt how to play in secret." 


OCTAR WAS EMULATING HIS HEROES — TINARI- 
| \ / | wen, Abdallah Oumbadougou and Bombino — and 
improving fast. In 2008 he travelled to Nigeria to record 

some songs, exposing his local style to a whole new audience. 

“The Tuareg style in Agadez has Auto- Tune and electronic drums 
and it is very fast, lots of energy, to make people dance,” he 
explains. *I sold a few cassettes to my friends, and they would share 
them with their friends using Bluetooth." 

That could have been the end of the story, but Moctar's music 
and the Agadez sound became a viral hit, spreading widely in West 


56 MOJO 


SAHARAN CELLPHONES 






MUSIC FROM 












Africa. "Originally, I heard him in 


Mali, then Nigeria, Mauritania...” 
says Chris Kirkley of the label Sahel Sounds, 
who released Music From Saharan Cellphones 
in 2011, featuring Moctar’s Tahoultine. “But 
nobody knew who he was. I probably spent 
two years trying to track him down.” Kirkley 
eventually found Moctar at his home, bring- 
ing with him a left-handed Fender and what 
must have seemed like outrageous plans to 
release the guitarist’s music globally. 
“Everyone in the district really liked what I was 
doing and my friends really pushed me, but I never 
could have dreamt what was to come,” reflects 
Moctar. Kirkley reissued those debut recordings — 
traditional-sounding Tuareg tunes with a futuristic 
approach — as the album Anar in 2013, and fol- 
lowed that a year later with Afelan, Recorded while 
the pair were hanging out in Agadez. The change of 
direction is obvious from the opening seconds of A 
Fleur Tamgak: feedback, the clatter of a drum kit, 
no arrangements the untrained ear would recog- 
nise, overdriven solos spiralling into the night sky. Iruly, as many 
reviewers observed, psychedelic. 

“Pardon?” Moctar shifts uncomfortably, looking puzzled. 

Psychedelic. 

"What's that? I’ve never heard this term before. Is it very new?" 

“Mdou’s favourite guitarist is Van Halen,” explains Coltun, who 
joined the band as bassist, driver and producer on their first US 
tour. “He’s playing what he thinks Van Halen is, his own version of 
tapping and shredding. You’d hear a lot of music in Agadez, takam- 
ba [wedding songs], tinde [traditional Tuareg music accompanied 
by drums] and long, repetitive pop music by the Hausa who live in 
the region, but western pop you wouldn’t hear very often. Now the 
kids there are trying to copy Mdou. They don’t know who Van Ha- 
len is, but there’s this weird mix, a new style.” 

Another hero is Prince, and in 2015 Sahel Sounds released 
Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai (Rain The Colour Of Blue With A 











Little Red In It), the soundtrack to the first 
Tamashek-language film, a crowdfunded ad- 


aptation of Purple Rain, starring Moctar, 
that told the story of every Tuareg guitarist's 
struggle. “It’s important to show the music in 
a different narrative from how it is usually 
told, that ‘rebel music’ thing," says Kirkley, 
who directed. “Here’s what the city looks 
like, here's how they play music...” 

The film looks spectacular, Moctar's live 
performances stunning. And it allowed the 
guitarist to speed around the desert on a 
motorbike resprayed a colour for which 
there is no Iamashek word. 


IS DEBUT FEATURE A SUC- 

cess, Moctar's fourth album in as 

many years was a return to his 
roots, the brooding, acoustic Sousoume 
Tamachek. “That is the core of the music, 
somebody sitting with a guitar, and compos- 
ing these folk songs,” explains Kirkley. “They 
are often learning to play with an acoustic 
they found somewhere, maybe the only 
one in the village. So much music in West 
Africa is tied to performance, though, often 
at ritual celebrations, so it had to become 
amplified, add а drum kit, let's make it 
a little faster, add some solos." 

Moctar laughs. *I definitely was born into 
and started with acoustic music but what I 
do with electric music is very different. m 
permanently curious about everything. If 
you listen to my first album, no Tuareg had 
ever made this kind of music; on the albums 
that came out after that, the music is con- 
stantly changing. After Sousoume, I wanted to 
do something different, so we went to a 


Blue with a little red т it: (right, 

= above and below) Mdou Moctar 

at work and play in Niamey, 

~~ Niger, November 2020; (left, 

· above and below) in the movie 
~~) Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai, 

sm Agadez, Niger, March 2014. 


Mdou Moctar's Desert 
Blues lineage... 


Le Jeune Chansonnier Du Mali 
(Sonafric, 1976) 
suc Touré bore along grudge 


a em against the label that 






released his first five LPs - 
24 an original today would 

| costyou more than he ever 
saw in royalties - yet where 
else do you start with the Saharan blues but 
the godfather? 


Aman Iman 
(Independiente, 2006) 


7 After two albums that 





explained what they did, 

$ Тіпагімеп grasped the 

"= myths that had grown up 

| around them on their third. 
| Sideone'sCler Achel and 
dm Yinmixan (both written by 
Ibrahim Ag Alhabib) are the very definition 
of Tuareg funk. 





Treeg Salaam 
E E 2009) 
. Atip of the hat to Spiritual- 
` — ized’s Jason Pierce for 
- hipping us to this quintet 
| from Western Sahara іп 
mg MOJO 170:"It's made by 
Fa somebody who loves Bo 
Diddley and Jimi Hendrix and gospel, so 
turnituploud andit sounds otherworldly." 






Guitars From Agadez Vol. 3 


(Sublime Frequencies, 2010) 


With guitarist Adi 
Mohamed tragically shot 
dead shortly before 

J "E recording, Bibi Ahmed 
| f ] reconfigured his group for 

ı MESS their secondalbum, and 

unleashed the Agadez sound: imagine 
yourself т 1966, with Brian and Keith 
jamming out the future of the Stones. 





Nomad 
опе 2013) 


Omara ‘Bombino’ Moctar 
(“The Moctars? We are like 

с З family") tookthe Agadez 
E: T. sound overground. Dan 

| Auerbach producesin 
Nashville, boosting bass 
and annie and introducing lap steel and 
keyboards. An undeniable influence on 
what Mdou Moctar would go onto do. 

















studio in America for the first time to record 


Папа: The Creator.” 

On first listen, Папа and Afrique Victime 
sound like two sides of the same coin — dark, 
violent extemporisations reflecting on the 
harshness of desert life in ways the Tuareg 
pioneers never quite communicate. On the 
title track of the latter, their first album for 
new label Matador, there is what sounds like 
an adaptation of Hendrix's Star-Spangled 
Banner, though Moctar stresses it was con- 
ceived long before he'd heard of Woodstock. 

Mikey Coltun thinks they are very differ- 
ent, however. *Ilana had a very specific, 
aggressive sound that we wanted after two 
weeks of touring. But Mdou is freaked out by 
studios and, as producer, it's my job to make 
him as comfortable as possible. This time 
I was trying to strategically trick him into 
recording backstage, at venues, in homes. ‘Just 
play, man, we'll make anything work.' We did 
some recording at the house we were staying 
in and as soon as people heard a guitar or 
drums, they came in. It was a recording 
session, but 300 kids showed up for a concert, 
so we just ended up doing that every night." 

"That's the Tuareg way,” 
bandleader. *We just want to live, to sleep 
outside and watch the stars. That's the kind 
of freedom we are interested in. I have been 


agrees his 


to Europe and America and my perception is 
that the focus of your life is work. Well, ours 
is on sleeping well and eating well. You have 
to work to survive. When I tour outside 
Africa I feel like I am in school. I don't think 
it's possible for a desert man to spend all his 
life in school. My life, my passion is music... 
and that's how I want it to be." М, 


MOJO 37 





TASTEMAKER, CURATOR, 
ENTHUSIAST: THREE QUALITIES 
OF THE PERFECT MOJO GUEST 
EDITOR. AND AS 

REMINDS US, HE’S BEEN A 
READER FROM THE START. 

“IT’S AN HONOUR.” HE SAYS. 
“AND IVE HAD А CHANCE TO = sar 
PUT EVERYTHING I LIKE INIT.” z 


PHOTOGRAPHY BY ca VA 


Te 











The business in hand: 
Beatles and Bowie, Sly 
and Marvin, Paul Weller 
flicks through some 
favourite back issues, 
Black Barn Studios, Ripley, 
Surrey. February 15, 2021. 


CSNY 
Celebrating Déjà Vu 
at 50, with brand 
new interviews 
andasneakpeek 
attheouttakes. 


THE 
CORAL 
Weller-endorsed 
Merseysiders mark 
25 years with a 
career hig! 


FUNKADELIC 


The sadne 
madnes: 
h A 

, the fun 
tripfron 


COVER 
STORIES 
The sle 
of Bill 
Featuring Th 
Plus tips or 


andsprayp | 





_ KEVIN | 
SHIELDS | 
Myl 
Valentine' 
visionary 
thinlinebe | 
perfecti 
in: 





66 PAUL 
WELLER 

` This month’s MOJO 
` Editor gets back 
` tothedayjob,the - 
new album, and = 
_ lockdown anxiety. | 


_ P72 PAUL 


McCARTNEY 


Thestory of 


Ме ег’; Beatle 
idol's greatest 
solo; 





Nicole Nodland 


MOJO 39 





Out of death and loss and 
coke and smack, four men 
on the songwriting jags of 
their lives came together to 
put their names to a band: 


Crosby, Stills, Hash & ошиц. 

And now, with a new edition 
brimming with revealing 
outtakes, it's Déjà Vu all over 
again. “It’s a miracle that we 
made such a great record, frankly," 
they tell Sylvie Simmons. 





“It was a crazy time but we did manage to 
put out a decent record.” Graham Nash 


"T felt like it was a stunner of a record." 

David Crosby 

“The idea wasn’t to create a surefire best-seller but 
to mass together some of the world’s best musicians 


and record a slice of history.” Stephen Stills 


"I think we did pretty well considering. I don't 
think we can ever live up to the myth that 
surrounded us." Neil Young 


AN FRANCISCO, 1969, SUMMER WAS 
not yet over, but for the four young musi- 
| cians residing at the Caravan Lodge Motel 
in the Tenderloin, it had already been an 
extraordinary year. In May, three of them 
— Crosby, Stills & Nash — released their 

self-titled debut to huge success: two hit singles; Top 10 
2 album. The fourth, Neil Young, released two albums — his 
$ self-titled debut in January and an album with his > 





40 MOJO 


и. 
€ 


‘Ute tae 


4° LEF 


1 
= 
= 
= 


arty On: the Déjà Vu band 
- (from left) Greg Reeves, David 
З Grosby, Neil Young, Stephen’ 
Stills, Graham\Nash, Dallas, 
TT Taylor; ready for anotherhard _ 
, day: onthe studiowfloor. ov us 


‚М 





“There wasn’t а lot of 
lollygagging”: CSNY 
with Taylor (left) and 
Reeves (far right) at 
Monkee Peter Tork’s 
house, August 1969; 
(insets) solo and group 
LPs; (opposite, clockwise 
from top) changing 
partners Nash and Joni 
Mitchell, September ’69; 
Stills and Judy Collins, 
1968; Young and Susan 
Acevedo, 1966; Crosby 
and Christine Hinton. 


<< new band Crazy Horse in May — and 
premiered songs from two upcoming 
albums on his solo acoustic tour. 

CSN were eager to hit the road too, 
but they needed musicians, Stephen 
Stills having played most of the instru- 
ments on the album. They asked Young if 
he wanted the job and Young agreed — on 
condition they make him a full, 
name-on-the-door partner. 

The retitled CSNY's first | 
show was on August 16 at the mS 
Auditorium Theatre, Chicago. "V7 
Their second was Woodstock. 
And now, with the smell of the 
mud still lingering — maybe too 
the memory of their new mem- у 
ber refusing to be filmed on-stage | 7 шшш 
with them — here they were, ina {f Майр: 


dump of a hotel in a dump ofa E c M i: 


neighbourhood, a short walk 
from Wally Heider's brand-new Studios, to record what 
might well have been the most anticipated (double plati- 
num on advance sales alone, a first) debut album in rock. 

Déjà Vu, six months and 800 studio hours in the mak- 
ing, was dark, ambitious, dramatic, wistful, coke-fuelled 
and brilliant. Released on Atlantic in March 1970, it 
turned the CSN album on its head and CSNY into the 
Great American Supergroup, the anointed figureheads of 
the Woodstock generation. 

Fifty-one years later (the pandemic messed up their golden an- 
niversary), MOJO is poring through Déjà Vu's latest reissue, with 
CSNY chipping in with their memories at the other end of various 
phones, Zooms and e-mails. A 4-CD set, it starts with the original 
album, remastered, and ends with alternative versions of every 
track on the album bar one (Neil Young's Country Girl). Two CDs 


in-between contain demos and outtakes of songs that made it onto 


Henry Diltz, Getty (3), Bobby Hammer/SONY PICTURES CLASSICS, Tom Gundelfinger 


42 MOJO 





the album and a whole lot that didn't. There's a slew of Stills 
songs and a handful or two of Nash's and Crosby's. The pau- 
city of Young songs has likely something to do with him 
keeping them aside for his own Archive releases. But what 
these tracks show — and the band's 







subsequent individual solo albums 
confirm — is what an incredible 
creative roll they were all on. 

“In life," says Crosby, “we were 
ricocheting off the walls, but artis- 
tically we were all producing pretty 
e n | high-grade stuff.” Songs like 

м, | Young's Birds, Nash's Sleep Song, 
VES Stills’ So Begins The Task and 
Crosby' sl aughing. It makes you 
wonder who decided which should 
stay or go, and how. C rosby re- 
members the selec tion process as bein 
"all pretty organic", no fights to the death; 
no-one surreptitiously deciding their song 
was too good for the band album and hang- 
ing onto it for themselves. *The songs we 
liked the best ended up on the record. We 
would sing each other the songs and it was 
pretty undeniable. And, you know, you've 
got four really good writers, so that's eight 
songs if you give each guy two songs apiece 
and if you're going with 10 songs, some- 
body is going to get an extra song. And 
where I'm in a band with Stephen Stills, believe me, that extra song 
should go to him. He was the best guy in the band, man. Best writer, 
best singer, best player, no contest." 

There was one cover song: Stills’ arrangement of Joni Mitchell’s 
Woodstock. “We got that track fairly quickly,” Stills recalls. “I actu- 
ally practised that with Jimi Hendrix first in NYC at Electric Lady- 
land — only the two of us in the studio, he played bass. It solidified 
my feel, playing with him. And then we traded and he learned the 









like Marriages, 
and hamani = 
beings lives. 
do not go - 
on parallel 









№ 


guitar part and I played bass. So I knew what I was doing but I didn't 
tell anybody else [in CSNY] that. I laid it on them. We did it live. It 
was the whole band playing together." 

The whole band playing together on Déjà Vu was almost as much 
of a rarity as a co-written song. Although critics called them the 
American Beatles, CSNY — who wrote their songs separately (and in 
Young's case recorded them in a different studio) and who didn't all 
play on each other's songs — was a very different animal. 

Making Déjà Vu, recalls Stills, *was like herding cats. In a pinball 
machine. At odd times it results in nuclear fission. There's a time 
when you must just cease trying to talk, because it's beginning to go 
in a circle and the same issues keep coming up. Somebody has got 
to say, 'Let's take this up later,’ and we were very bad at that. At least 
that's how it seemed. But there's some imagination going into this," 
he adds, laughing. *Because we are talking about 50 years ago." 


B AVID GEFFEN — CSNY'S CO-MANAGER WITH ELLIOT 
Roberts — once said of CSNY that what they had in com- 
mon was bod musicians. And that's about it." Nash, he 





said, was an "extremely modest and quiet gentleman" and 
Stills “not particularly modest about у while Crosby was 

“а revolutionary-type individual" and Young *very shy and not in- 
terested at all in all the big pop star bullshit." 

The reason CSN were able to put differences and egos aside was 
harmony — literally first, then figuratively. From the first time they 
sang together and those distinctive harmonies came out, it was 
love. The late Paul Rothchild, who produced CSN's original song 
demo, said they would play and sing to everyone, and everyone 
who heard their harmonies fell to their knees. CSN *could have 
started a religion", he said. Like CSN, Rothchild lived in Laurel 
Canyon, whose sunny, mellow, harmonious vibe was all over CSN. 
Into this little Eden walks Neil Young. 

Of all the guitarists in the world, why choose this one to play in 
their touring band, and change their name to accommodate him? 
CSN's album had made it to Number 6 in the charts, Young's debut 
didn't even make the Top 100. In that regard, he needed them more 
than they did. Yes, he had history with Stills in the Buffalo Springfield, 













but they'd fought like cats, then Young just 
upped and left. It was Ahmet Ertegun, the head 
of Atlantic Records, who came up with the idea. 
He'd cried when the Springfield broke up, he so 
loved the sound of Young and Stills together. 

Says Stills, *The first thing I said to Ahmet 
was, ‘Are you out of your mind? He's already 
copped out on me once!’ And he laughed and 
said, “Think about it.’ And thinking about it I 
realised that it might become interesting — if we 
could keep him filled with a healthy amount of 
self-doubt. Actually pretty unhealthy but, you 
know, I figured I needed it. And it was uncom- 
fortable, But a little tension is good for you." 

Says Crosby, “When Stephen said, ‘I think 
we have to get Neil in because some of the time 
I'm going to be playing keyboards,’ we said, 
‘Why?’ He said, ‘Ahmet thinks it’s a good idea’ 
— and Ahmet was our mentor, Ahmet was the 
one guy running a record company who loved 
music. I was sitting in the driveway of Joni’s 
house on Lookout Mountain and Neil drove up 
the street and he saw me and turned around and 
came back. I said, ‘What’ve you been doing?’ 
and he said, ‘Writing new songs.’ I said, ‘Can I 
hear them?’ He sat down on the trunk of the car 
with me and sang me four songs in a row. Iwo of 
them were Helpless and Country Girl. And I 
was: Yeah, I want him in the band. Because 
songs are the key to the whole deal. If you don’t 
have a song it’s all polishing a turd.” 

Says Nash, “Part of our — my — reticence in 
inviting Neil into the band was we had created this beautiful three- 
part harmony and we were about to disturb that, because four-part 
harmony is way different. When Ahmet suggested Neil, I think he 
was after the energy that happens between Stephen and Neil when 
they start playing guitar with each other and against each other. That 
was what Ahmet was looking for, somebody to keep Stephen 
interested. Someone to keep Stephen alive.” 

What would have happened had they just toured with Neil and 
made a second CSN album instead? Crosby and Nash are confident 
they could have made a good one, given the songs they were writing, 
but Stills isn't so sure. ^We might have made a typical sophomore 
complete pablum album. Or broken up sooner. Or not. I don't 
know,” says Stills, “but it was more fun with Neil around. Because 
he surprised you." 

Crosby once said, "Anything Neil walks into, I don't care if it's a 
bathroom, is different thereafter." What exactly changed when 
Young joined the band? 

“You can hear it over the course of the album," says Stills. “It 
starts out with Carry On, which is very much a constructed song in 
the style of the first CSN album and kind of the last song with the 
acoustic guitar, and then it runs along and then Neil comes in and 
virtually takes over and then side two is the Neil side. It's hilarious! 
That just struck me today. I didn't even realise that at the time." 

Carry On, which opens the album, was actually the last song to 
be written. Stills and Nash were walking to the studio from their 
motel when Nash said, “We don't have a Suite. Stephen said, ‘I 
know, we used it on the first record.’ I said, ‘You misunderstand, ” 
Nash recounts. **We don't have that kind of a song to open the 
album with.’ I would be shocked if after Suite: Judy Blue Eyes 
anyone got up and changed the record. Once you hear that you 
want to hear the rest. And Stephen said, 'You're right.” 

"And immediately," says Stills, *it occurred to me what it could 
be. So I went back to my room in this horrifying hotel and the next 
morning I knocked on Graham's door and said, ‘OK, how's this?’ 
and I played him Carry On and he went nuts. So we got everybody 
together in the studio and recorded it, And that's how the 800 
hours were spent. There wasn't a lot of lollygagging." > 


MOJO 43 










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< Still, there’d have been many fewer 
hours if Young, evangelist of the first-take, 
warts-and-all approach, had had his way 
instead of Stills, the perfectionist. “I was 
nit-picking!” Stills admits. “I was finding 
little flaws. Neil would do something and 
I would have a suggestion for a little tiny 
fix. Neil would say, “That doesn’t matter, 
it feels good!’ Actually Neil was right. But 
I was very meticulous in those days.” 

So Stills’ reputation as a dictator 
wasn’t overestimated? 

“No, it was. I wasn’t Donald Trump, 
for pity’s sake! Га get an idea and Га 
keep going until I heard it back in the 
speakers and Graham was the only one 
who understood that. Actually, Neil did too, We: 
and he'd go along until he could tell me with 
а straight face, “That doesn't make any sense | | 
Stephen, let's move оп,’ and I would." 
( Vu is that, like nothing else, it em- 
| bodied the death of the hippy dream. 
That they began recording in July '69, one month after the Manson 
killings in the Canyons, and ended in January '70, the month after 
Altamont — at which they played — fits this theory. It's a deeper, 
darker, lonelier, more inward-looking album than Crosby Stills & 
Nash. You can see it on the album sleeve, too. Where CSN's group 
shot has them hanging outside a hippy house on an old sofa in the 
sun, Déjà Vu's has a sober, gritty, sepia photo of six unsmiling men 
and a stray dog, looking like something from the Civil War. 

It was Stills’ idea. At first, at Stills’ insistence, they tried using a 
> bulky camera from the 19th century. It didn’t work. “So we took 
the picture with a regular camera and degraded it, then glued it on 


NE GREAT MYTH ABOUT DÉJÀ 


=. 





a hymnal. Because everything was so important,” Stills explains, “I 
figured a hymnal would do.” 

He settled instead on some very expensive paper that looked like 
leatherette. With the initial pressings, each photo had to be stuck 


44 MOJO 





machine. At 
odd times 

it results 
i nuclear 


fission, 
в... 







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Ё 






“You're thrilled with being 
in this band”: (clockwise 
from above) Stills, Young, 
Nash, Crosby rehearse 
for TV, Los Angeles, 

| September 22, 1969; 
(insets below) CSNY solo 
LPs that followed реја Vu. 







n ЖЕЕП | 










°` | on by hand. “Ahmet called me personally and said, “What 
are you doing?! That's the most expensive album е we 
ever did.’ I said, ‘Don’t worry, it will sell а lot, we'll make 
it up," which they did. 

But Déjà Vu wasn't intended to be an album about the 
| Zeitgeist. It was personal — reflecting for the most part on 
| all four having lost their romantic partners. In the short 
space between Nash writing Our House in the Laurel Can- 
- yon home he shared with Joni Mitchell and recording it in San 
Francisco, Joni had broken up with him. *Devastating," Nash 
says. Crosby's partner Christine Hinton had just been killed in 
a car accident. “I was completely unable to deal with it,” 
says Crosby. “It was a very, very dark time. I would wind 
up sitting on the studio floor crying.” Stills’ girlfriend Judy 
Collins, the muse of Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, left him too. 

“Well that's enough, isn't it?” says Stills. "A lot of 
darkness. You’d need a quadruple album to cover every- 
thing. We erred on the side of caution, not being too 
morose, you know? 4+ 20 pretty much covered it for 
everybody. I mean, it’s about bloody suicide, isn’t it?” 

And Young had broken up with his wife Susan Acevedo, 
leaving their Topanga Canyon house on the hill and head- 
ing north to San Francisco with his two pet bush babies, 
Harry and Speedy, now living with him in the motel. 
“You'd knock on Neil’s door,” Nash recalls, “and it would open a 
little crack and then boing! one of these little creatures would land 
on Neil’s shoulder and he would finally open the door.” 

Nash says they all looked out for each other during their per- 
sonal turmoils. “When one of us was weak, the other was strong. If 
somebody was a little out of it somebody would be more stable. It 
was an ever constantly moving thing that pivoted on the music. The 
music was our saviour really. We could come together in music and 
that was a way to deal with our personal problems.” It was also good 
to be among friends; the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane were 
also recording at Wally Heider's. 

One night, after laying down the tracks for Teach Your Children, 
Nash waited to see whether Young or Stills would add a solo. 

“Stephen said, ‘Between me and Neil we've done about 12 solos 
on this record; what can we do that’s different?’ Croz said that [the 


Dead's] Jerry [Garcia] had been learning 
pedal steel so let's go ask him. So we went 
next door and he listened to the song and 
said, ‘Let me at it? He brought his pedal 
steel into our studio and did the first take 
and I told him, *Thank you very much, 
that’s great.’ He said, ‘Actually I fucked up’ 
and did a second take. But at the end of the 
day we went with the first, because it 
sounded so innocent, so together with the 
spirit of the song." 

Besides music, they were also trying to 
deal with their problems with drugs. When 
I ask them all what they might have done 
differently, given the benefit of 50 years 
hindsight, Nash says, *I would have kept 
cocaine out of the studio. It isolates you. 
Makes you selfish. Things get a little colder. 
Smiles get lost in between." 

Stills agrees. “Certainly could have done 
without the drugs, or so much of them. 
Cocaine enhances your personality — but 
what if you're an asshole?" 

And Crosby says, “If I hadn't been doing 
coke and heroin, everything — dealing with 
them; dealing with that girl's death — 
would have been 10 times better and easier. 
It’s a miracle that we made such a great 
record, frankly. m amazed that it came out 
and that all the way through it was at the 
level it was. I’m very proud of it." 


ЕЛА VU SOLD SEVEN MILLION 
copies and spent nearly a hundred 
weeks in the charts. CSNY set off on 
a turbulent tour which at one point 
led to Crosby, Nash and Young firing Stills. 
They reinstated him. Within months of the 
CSNY album, each of them released a 
significant, acclaimed solo album — Crosby’s 
If I Could Only Remember My Name; Stills’ 
Stills; Nash's Songs For Beginners and Young's 
After The Gold Rush — all featuring at least 
one other of their CSNY bandmates. Yet it 
would be another 18 years before the full 





name adorned a second studio album. 


Although CSNY has never officially bro- 








Five killer outtakes from the 
upcoming, bumper Déjà Vu, 
selected by Sylvie Simmons. 


Our House 


Graham Nash & Joni Mitchell (demo) 
Ina sense the soul of Déjà Vu: a guileless song 
of domestic bliss written at "Willie" and Joni's 
house but not recorded until after she dumped 
him. They were still together when Jane Lurie, 
Joni'sformer NYC roommate, recorded the 
pair singing it at her piano on a visit. Joni's 
harmony sounds gleefully childlike. 


(Aud + , 

ditis 

Neil Young & Graham Nash (demo) 
Just Young and Nash and an acoustic guitar 
which, in a dash of dialogue, Nash asks him 
to tune. It's slow, stately and downright 
beautiful. Nash's perfect high harmonies and 
Young's "oohs" make it more sorrowful still 
thanthe version on After The Gold Rush. 


Song With Ao Wor 
David Crosby & Graham Nash (demo) 


Croz and Nash aren't talking these days, 
but back then they were bosom buddies - 





Nash had recently accompanied his suicidally- 


sad friend on a lengthy sea voyage on his 
schooner. Here their harmonies are 
impossibly perfect, fused, parting, then 
sewn backup again. 


So Beqins O 
07 ( | 


e 
Ste phen Stills (demo) 
About as different as could be from the 
version on Stills’ Manassas, So Begins... is 
sung solo оп acoustic guitar - spare and raw, 
sounding like a great coffeehouse folk song. 
His now-ex girlfriend Judy Collins recorded 
her own version of it within the year. 








David Crosby (demo) 
A deeply moving version of a beautiful song 
by and about a man trying to finda way 
through despair and back toa place of 
innocence. Crosby's voice is luminous over 
the slow, solo, doomy acoustic guitar. А 


| second version inthe outtakes has a slightly 


ken up, the past half century has witnessed 
any number of instances of its members 
coming together, leaving, or teaming up for 
various lengths of time in one incarnation 
or another: CSNY, CSN, Crosby & Nash, 
the Stills-Young Band. Can they say what it 
is that draws them together — and what 
pushes them apart? 

Crosby, Stills and Nash all agree on the 
answer to the first half of the question: “The 
music”. Tackling the second half, Crosby 
says, “Bands are like marriages, and human 
beings’ lives do not go on parallel paths. 
We’re always either getting closer to each 
other or getting further away. Always. Bands, 
when they start out, you’re really in love with 
each other because you love each other’s 
music and the excitement that you’re causing 
and you’re thrilled with being in this band. 
But after 40 years that devolves to ‘turn on 
the smoke machine and play your hits’.” 

None of them mentions the Neil Young 
factor. I asked Young once why he was the 
only one in CSNY who refused to be filmed at 
Woodstock. He said, “I was the only person 
in Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young that was, you 
know, not Crosby, Stills & Nash. I just didn’t 
want to do that.” When I asked if actually he 
enjoyed being in a band, part of a team, and 
not a solo artist he said, “Sure. Still do. It’s 
why I’ve got Crazy Horse.” And CSNY? “A 
lot of the things that Stephen and I — all our 
guitar playing in Crosby, Stills & Nash — was 
all just residue from the Buffalo Springfield. It 
was from playing with the big beat and with- 
out the big star trip. It was the real thing.” 

Talking about the dynamic of the band in 
Jimmy McDonough’s biography Shakey, 
Young summed it up this way: “Crosby was 
the catalyst, the spiritual leader of the band. 
Stills was musical director. Graham was 
kind of like the CEO.” And himself? “Turns 
out I was just passing through.” М; 


Déjà Vu, the 5Oth Anniversary Deluxe Edition is 
available in 4- CD/ 1 -LP, 5-LP, and digital | formats 
and will be released on May 14 by Rhino. 





“It was the real thing”: (from left) Stills, Young, Nash and 
Crosby carry on again, Bridge School Benefit, Shoreline 
| um Mountain View, CA, October 26, 2013. 


™ different feel, not so majestically mournful. 





hit a reef. 


Alicena age THE TOR 


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ДЕТЕ id ИШ "ТИТЛ ЛЛ 


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of financial and mental health 
crises. Miraculously, they 
stayed afloat and in 2021 the 
Weller-approved Wirral-ites 
celebrate their Silver Jubilee 


with Coral Island, their mnysticaik== === 


masterpiece. It’s a strange saga, 


but, as they tell ЇЙЇ ИШ, 


"we area little bit odd." 





Photograph ANDREW ИТШ. N 





46 МО)О 


1S OVER 19 YEARS SINCE MOJO LAST ЗАТ DOWN 
properly with The Coral. Back then the Wirral-based quintet 
were promoting their sixth studio release, the John Leckie- 
produced Butterfly House. An album of lush melodic D 
lia, it felt confident, assured. “We’re stronger than ever,’ 
frontman James Skelly told MOJO, as the band prepared for a 
UK tour and a sold-out gig at the Royal Albert Hall. *We've 
got the map now. We’ve got to push on.” 

What happened instead was a dead stop. 

“Yeah,” says Skelly with a sigh. “I had a breakdown. I had to 


move back to my mom’s and I kipped on my younger brother 








Alfie’s floor for about a year. I was hallucinating, I couldn’t remember 
where I'd been. I just thought, I'm absolutely fuckedyand I need to just 
stop. I’m ill." 

Skelly also started to doubt himself as a musician and as the leader 
of The Coral. “I felt Га become a caricature of what I thought I should 
be,” he says, “playing a part, but distant from that part. Then, one day, 
I was lying on the beach, speaking to my little brother. I looked at the 
moon, and the sea was in the distance and I felt OK. Га been thinking, 
How do I function, so I can go forward? I needed a new way to do The 
Coral. Little things like that started to help. I thought, OK. That moment 
there. Every time you feel like that, that's good. Don't question it." 





= "ome us 


=$- 


=. = To the manor born: The Cora -__ E . 


=- = 
= = 


-- at Woolton Hall, Liverpool, ==- = 
February 16, 2021 (from left) : 





= «9-5 1 Paul Molloy, Paul Duffy, James 
| Skelly, lan Skelly, Nick Power. 


к= 






FS DECADE LATER AND THE 40-YEAR-OLD SKELLY IS 

M talking to MOJO from Liverpool’s Parr Street Studios about his 
B group’s new album, Coral Island. Their tenth long-player, it is, 
more importantly, their third since the end of their self-enforced 
six-year hiatus in 2016 and the one that perhaps best exemplifies 
Skelly's restorative belief in the power of sea, sky, and the magical 
power of those small, telling moments. 

A double concept album, set in a fictitious seaside town seem- 
ingly located somewhere between actual New Brighton and ghost 
story master M.R. James's haunted Seaburgh, it's a haunting rumi- 
nation on place and time, told through 15 exquisitely melodic ba- 


roque-pop gems, songs of escapism, fatalism and hope interlaced 
with other-worldly narrative fragments, written by the band's key- 
board player Nick Power and related in rolling Mersey brogue by Ian 
Murray, aka James Skelly’s grandad. Perhaps more than any other 
Coral ГР it's also a record assembled from those small moments. If 
the overarching idea calls to mind conceptual '60s classics such as 
the Small Faces’ Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake and The Kinks Are The Village 
Green Preservation Society, the roots of Coral Island are specific to both : 
the band themselves, their past, and the area they grew up in, the 
seaside town of Hoylake on the Wirral Peninsula. 

“Ideas like that always come into shape at lam during dark > < 


terill 


ndrew Cot 


MOJO 47 





< motorway conversations,” explains Nick Power. “We were like, 
Why don’t we just consolidate our experiences of growing up in 
a small seaside town, in the shadow of Liverpool and Wales, this 
no-man’s land between these two really strong magnetic forces, 
never a part of either of them.” 

“It’s also about trying to capture an idea of the seaside that exists 
in our imaginations,” adds James Skelly. “I lived by the sea but mum 
and dad owned pubs so I also moved around a lot. I got my ideas 
from books and music but I was always drawn to the feel of that 
coastal world." He pauses, trying to explain. *The way to sum it up 
is if you've ever heard the sound of the wind between the sails of 
boats in the harbour. Well to me it sounds like Joe Meek's music, 
fairground music. It's the sound of ghosts; the sound of a world 
between worlds. The sound of Coral Island." 


| HERE IS A REAL CORAL ISLAND. IT IS A GIANT, 


45 -year-old amusement arcade on Blackpool Promenade 





decorated in the style of a Moorish castle, and topped 
with a giant grinning pirate skull. It’s somewhere The Coral 
have passed, numerous times, on the road, and is almost cer- 
tainly the building that gave their new album its name. How- 
ever, the true roots of Coral Island are stranger, weirder, and 
exist in that world between worlds where memory, music and 
a certain kind of feral lawlessness unite. In the 196-page book 
that accompanies certain editions of the record, Nick Power 
writes of a place called Finniland, a seaside ghost town, 
rotting in the shadows of a chemical plant, that 
Power named after what he calls a “horrific hand- 
built funfair next to Finnigan’s restaurant in 
Hoylake... crumbling brick walls decorated 
with ghouls and vultures. Lots of injured children. 
Very League Of Gentlemen.” 

There was also The Wirral Show. “It was this 
fair that appeared overnight, unchecked, in the 
middle of a field,” explains Power. “Very Ray 
Bradbury. Site of multiple accidents and always 
the same soundtrack: Eddie Cochran, Gene 
Vincent, Del Shannon.” 

“When I was a kid,” says James Skelly, “my dad 
had a burger van and we'd travel with the ice cream vans to 
The Wirral Show. I'd be there right from the beginning as 
they were setting up all the rides. That was magic for 
me. You arrived in the town and it felt like anything 


could happen. Candy floss and diesel. I can 


ry Pirates on parade: (above) Blackpool's 









































Coral Island; (top) James Skelly, Manchester 

| Academy, June 9, 2010; (above right) debut LP- 
era Coral take a walk at Hoylake, Wirral, August 
20, 2002 (from left) Power, Duffy, Lee Southall, 
Bill Ryder-Jones, James and lan Skelly; (insets 
left, from top) 2002's debut, 2003's Magic 

And Medicine, the new album; Ryder-Jones at 
Witnness festival, Co. Kildare, July 12, 2003. 


То a playlist of mid-’90s favourites, the 
pair added 2-Ione and Motown records 
belonging to Dufty’s dad. 


still smell it. Even now, if I see a poster for a 
fair I get the same feeling. It's almost like a 
promise made." 

Although the Skelly family were based in 
Hoylake, they moved around a lot, managing 
various hostelries in the Merseyside area. “I 
didn’t come back to settle ’til I was 18,” 
explains James, “so a lot of my childhood 


| тйе coral 


Coral Island 








“We all hung around Paul’s,” says Ian. 
"because we could smoke pot there. We'd 


go record shopping in the day and then come back. I 
remember one night when we played Beefheart's Safe 
As Milk for the first time — this cartoony but dark but 
really colourful album... No one said anything in the 
room after Electricity finished. That was like the 
eureka moment for The Coral." 


was lived in books. In my imagination. That's 
alot of what The Coral’s about.” 

It was while the Skellys were living in a pub in 
Wallasey that younger brother Ian formed the 
rudiments of what would be The Coral with school- 
mate and future bassist Paul Duffy. “I went to primary 
school with Paul,” says Ian. “He was into Madness and 
could play the saxophone when he was like 10.” 

“My mum was a music teacher in the primary 
school,” explains Duffy, “so there’d always been musi- 
cal instruments in the house. She put on school plays 
and took them very seriously. Ian and I were in the 
plays and always creative. We’d make little movies of 
ourselves, daft little horror movies on VHS. Then of 
course, Oasis came around, same time as The Beatles’ 


(3), WENN 


Anthology, so I get a big complete Beatles chord book, 


etty 


5 we're listening to Oasis and Ian gets his big drum kit.” 


48 MOJO 






“We were a weird bunch even then,” says Duffy, 


laughing. “Me, Ian, James, Bill [Ryder- 
Jones], Lee [Southall]. When we weren’t 
listening to records we'd just wander around 
West Kirby, Hoylake, get in little hidey spots 
like the big war monument or Thurstaston 
cliff tops and get stoned. Everyone else would 
be hanging outside ofhes and leisure centres. 
We were up on the hills looking down on 
the old promenade and the lighthouse, and 
out to sea.” 

“Liverpool was on your right,” adds James 
Skelly, “North Wales on your left, and only 
the sea keeping you from both. Musically, 
we had Gorky's [Zygotic Mynci] and the 
Super Furry Animals on one side, Shack, 
The La’s and the Bunnymen on the other, 


| 
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JM 


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both these things being beamed at 
you... But there was also some- 
thing else out there." 

"We'd be imagining the stories 
written on faded promenade 
postcards," says Duffy. *We'd be 
conjuring up the old ghosts of 
yesterday. A little bit odd. But we 
are little bit odd." 


HE FIRST TIME THIS 

writer met The Coral was at а MOJO-sponsored Black Keys 
concert at Wilton's Music Hall in London's East End in 2008. 
Guitar prodigy Bill Ryder-Jones had just left the group for a second 





time, citing mental exhaustion (he has since built a career as a bril- 
liant solo singer-songwriter), and the rest of the group looked dead 
on their feet, cloaked behind a security-fug of heavy skunk weed and 
wary of industry interlopers unless they were happy to talk about 
Dion and Del Shannon. Since the release of their first single, the 
ghost-ska ballroom incantation of Shadows Fall, they had been 
hailed as “Scouse” heirs to Oasis, part of a guitar-group revival 
alongside The Libertines and fellow Merseysiders The Zutons. 
Their debut LP had gone platinum in the UK, while their second, 
Magic And Medicine, knocked Beyoncé off the Number 1 spot. 
2005's The Invisible Invasion, produced by Portishead's Geoff Bar- 
row and Adrian Utley, reached Number 3. Celebrity fans included 
Noel Gallagher and Paul Weller, who declared 2007's Roots & Echoes 
one of the albums of the year. On paper, they seemed unassailable. 
In reality, they were a mess, on the wrong road, and heading for a 
crash that had been waiting up ahead for a long time. 

“Right from the start, we suffered from Holden Caulfield Syn- 
Чготе,” says James Skelly. *If you start from the presumption that 
everyone else in the media is a fake, you've put yourself in a corner, 
haven't you? And if you smoke that much skunk you're incapable of 
interacting with anyone. You're lazy. You're totally paranoid and 


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because you're insecure you don't 
want anyone to know you, because 
you're not you yet." 

Very early on, James Skelly was 
expected to be the face and the 
spokesperson for this new wave of 
guitar bands, a next-gen Gallagher 
for the 21st century. 

“I didn't want that responsibili- 
ty! This lad who read M.R. James 
and Edgar Allan Poe expected to do 

the *Manc walk'. I remember our manager, Alan [Wills] talking 
about Bob Dylan. I was like, *He's the greatest.’ He said, ‘Yeah, 
but would you want it? Every day? То be that?' Every time I do 
well now, I tell myself that it's not the most important thing in 
the world. When I think it's the most important thing in the world 
I can't even function." 

As a coping mechanism, the group would be drawn to acts of 
self-sabotage, refusing to go along with the requests of their record 
label, or music magazines. 

“Ра grown up in pubs," says James, *around people who'd say, 
‘Tm not doing that, bring it to me.’ You know, having it all on your 
own terms. The trouble with your own terms, I now realise, is you 
end up on your own." 

James still views with regret the final departure of Ryder-Jones in 
2008 and guitarist Lee Southall in 2015, because, he says, “they 
were younger than me and I felt I had to protect them. There was 
that constant worry: ‘I can't let this get out of hand. Because there's 
no way back.’ In the end, though, it just grinds you down. 
Inow think Bill should have left earlier. The problem was, we didn't 
really have a solid management team. We had Alan Wills. It was like 
lunatics running the asylum." 

Wills, a former drummer with Shack, had first seen The Coral 
play live after spotting a poster designed by Ian Skelly, depicting 
grandad Тап? head exploding. It was Wills who set up Delta- >> 


ICA. 


TS 
13. 
= © 





MOJO 49 





Skelly’s heroes: the Weller- 
endorsed Cut Glass Kings 
(from left) Paul Cross and 
Greg McMurray; (bottom) 
Marvin Powell. 








< sonic Records with his partner Ann Heston, in order to pro- 
mote The Coral. A joint venture deal with Sony Records, who 
owned 49 per cent of the label, Deltasonic became home to other 
promising Merseyside groups including The Zutons, The Dead 60s, 
The Bandits, The Stands, and Tramp Attack, while Wills assumed 
the role of manager and cultural guru to his young charges. 

“Alan told us to get off the Liverpool club circuit, lock ourselves 
away for a year and write some good tunes,” says Ian. “He kind of 
gave us that licence to combine Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and The Mills 
Brothers, add Four Freshmen harmonies with a mad ska beat.” 

“He made us watch Jim Jarmusch films,” adds Nick Power, “and 
he also gave me the Sam Shepard book, Motel Chronicles, which 
was a massive influence on my writing and on Coral Island. He intro- 
duced us to this other world. The flip side was, there was no one 
stepping in to say, ‘Enough with the drugs.’ The weed we were 
smoking was straight off the Bootle docks. It was like bloody LSD. 
Willsy would be saying, ‘You’re in a movie now! This is all a movie!’ 
That and the drugs, it gave you a detachment from the real world 
and that’s what caused all the problems later on.” 

Even though there have been graver incidents of rock’n’roll mis- 
chief in the history of The Coral — like the time they got themselves 
banned from the Isle Of Man — these days James Skelly prefers to 
relate a more pitiful tale. 

“Bill had just decided to stop touring, around the time of [2005] 5 
Invisible Invasion," he says. *Me and Nick were in this stinking flat 
above this pub, just getting shit-faced. Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce 
were playing there with this guy called Vinny Peculiar and I remem- 
ber them walking out of the pub and I was just throwing bread at 
them out the pub window. That's the moment I look back on. Why? 
Because it's so pathetic. I mean, there's defiance in getting kicked 
off the Isle Of Man but throwing slices of bread at The Smiths’ 
rhythm section? That's low. I had nothing left." 

The band now admit they were in chaos between Invisible Inva- 
sion and 2007s Roots & Echoes, while conceding that they were also 
creating some of their best work. 

“Yeah, on paper it all looks fine,” says Paul Duffy. “But it was 
a mess. I was just anxious and worried all the time. I remember 
walking to the rehearsal room during Curse Of Love [the ‘lost’ album 
recorded after Invisible Invasion but not released until 2014] and just 
feeling dread. You could sense it in the room. We weren't psychia- 
trists, you're not going to ‘reach out’ to each other, and we wouldn't 
know what to say anyway, but it was coming through in the music: 
‘We can’t handle it, we can't handle it.” 

A major regroup came with Butterfly House, during which the 
band re-emerged with a new sense of purpose. Then came a meet- 
ing with Sony. 

“They were all, ‘This is great. This is great. We love it. We're 
dropping you, 
I just thought, the tunes will find a way." 


999 


says James Skelly. “I didn’t really care by that stage. 


^I remember the Butterfly House tour,” says Duffy. “I just kept 
telling myself, ШРИ be fine. It'll be fine. James is the leader.’ I just 
expected this one guy to sort it all out.” 


9 


“I ended up paying for some of that tour,” says James, “апа 
alterwards it was like, ‘Fuck, there's no money left. It's gone.’ In a 
way, I knew and Nick knew we needed to stop this train." 

“James said, ‘We can either make a record and be absolutely 
broke ог stop and divide up what's left,” says Duffy. “Absolute 
panic! Suddenly that sense of securitv has been torn from vou. 
I have to fend for myself? How? I've got no GCSEs! I don't know 
how to do spreadsheets!" 

“I think everyone was hurt and scared," says James. Yet the 
group slowly realised a hiatus could be the positive move. “From 
that moment," the singer asserts, *The Coral were in charge." 


HE CORAL CEASED TO FUNCTION AS AN ACTIVE 
group between 2012 to 2015. “That was a rude awakening,” 


ША says Ian Skelly, laughing. “Back to playing in covers bands in 

crappy little bars, people coming up to me going, "Weren't you in 

The Coral?' But it was an education. It's what we all needed." 
Little by little, new music started to come. Ian Skelly formed 


Nicole Nodland, Courtesy Skeleton Key Records (2) 


harmony-psych duo Serpent 
Power with former Skylarks and 
Zutons guitarist Paul Molloy, 
James Skelly launched his 
Skeleton Key label and gathered 
members of the band together 
for his wistful 2013 solo album, 
Love Undercover, while Paul Duffy 
developed an interest in 
soundtracks and began recording 
with Manchester singer-song- 
writer Ren Harvieu. Nick Power, 
meanwhile, released 2017's 


Г J | ? | к F. К Lif 
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man getting his life back together in a seaside static 


caravan park — and published his poetry plus a 
Coral tour diary titled Into The Void. Like the rest 
of the band, Power also found himself coming to 
terms with the unexpected death of Alan Wills, 


following a cycling accident in 2014. 


“It was devastating,” says Power. “And really 


hard to deal with because we weren’t together 


as a band at the time. It just filtered in slowly. It 


was something so big. Like our youth had just 


been yanked away.” 


As its crew gradually righted themselves, so, 
eventually, did the mothership. 2016's comeback 


Coral LP Distance Inbetween, showcased the new- 


found live power of the group (thanks in part to 
the addition of Paul Molloy on guitar). 2018's 


Move Through The Dawn was a semi-conceptual 


ШОТА 
ЕЕК [ Lid | iid | i | | 
AND DIVIDE UR WHAT'S LERT 

i | Lif¢ | | ris i ( " 
ABSOLUTE RANIG!” PAUL DURRY 
( ( MA ( [ Н ( 


under-the-radar concept album, Caravan — about а 


“We're not dealing in nostalgia...": 
The Coral in the pavilion of their 
mind, February 2021 (clockwise 
from top left) Paul Duffy, Paul 
Molloy, James Skelly, Nick Power 
and lan Skelly; (bottom) an lan 
Skelly illustration from Nick 
Power's Coral Island book. 


breathes, that was the intention. 

“Most of it was recorded on 
a little quarter-inch tape 
machine," explains James Skelly. 
^We wanted it to sound like an 
old seaside postcard or photo- 
graph, sometimes broken, 


sometimes scratched.” 


But if Coral Island is a relic, it's of a place 
and time that never existed. ^We're not 


dealing in nostalgia," 


says the singer. "It 
might be escapism, but there's nothing 
wrong with escapism. I think you can 
sometimes see the world clearer when 
you leave it." 

Yet James Skelly never left it, not 
completely. Even at his worst moments, 
he insists, he did not seriously consider 

splitting The Coral. 
“Never,” he says. “I was brought up with 
a great responsibility towards family. My 


grandad and my nan had five kids and my 


auntie had spina bifida and was in a wheel- 
chair. She never complained. They were 


happy. Whenever my grandad had to go on 


take on a radio-friendly pop album. 
Both were steps forward, but Coral Island is 
the giant leap. If it sounds like it lives and 


work nights, or mom and dad had to work 
at a pub we'd all look after each other. 
We'd always be there for each other.” Q 


Andrew Cotterill (5), 


MOJO 51 





т іа Ж 
в à = 
LT а ai Ы 





Maggot Brain Was 

диги George Cliñtors acid- drenched ` 
vision of a black psych apocalypse, but it | 
fell to his hyper-talented junkie guitarist M 
Eddie Hazel to give it soul. After its July = 
1971 manifestation, rock, funk, and 
Funkadelic themselves, were never 
the same. As Clinton told MOJO’s 
‚ “| guess we really did 

get loony and didn’t know it.” 


Portrait by: 


T’S A LATE 1970 EVENING AT DETROIT’S UNITED Ps 00^ BM 
Sound studio and the drug divide within Funkadelic is widen- sO NOW 
ing. As work starts on their third album, producer George Clin- 
ton and guitarist Eddie Hazel are flying on potent yellow sun- 
shine LSD while the rhythm section are nodding on heroin. 
Yet Clinton hears something in a haunting chord sequence 
being trundled at funereal tempo by guitarist Tawl Ross and 





bassist Billy Nelson. His acid-bubbling brain starts envisioning 
a mournful eulogy: for departed souls, darkening times and a utopian 
hippy dream soured by conflicts in Vietnam and America's inner cities. 
Clinton cues in Eddie Hazel, the mercurial guitarist believed to carry 
some of Jimi Hendrix's spirit even before the latter's recent death, 
knowing he only has to brush Hazel's emotional hair-trigger to send his 
performance into the stratosphere. 

Having surrounded the guitarist with Marshall stacks, Clinton bom- 
bards him with worst case scenarios, hitting home when he tells Hazel to 
imagine his mother has just died. Lacing his Stratocaster with fuzz box and 
Crybaby wah wah, Hazel unleashes an astonishing 10-minute reverie from 
his fragile, acid-wired soul, nailing the "spirituality of despair” Clinton is | 
hoping for. “When he started playing, I knew immediately that he under- o 5 o om 
stood what I meant,” recalled Clinton later. “I could see the guitar notes 
stretching out like a silver web. When we played the solo back, > 


Mirrorpix 


52 MOJO 


Funkadelic, their Ass following, 
just banned from Royal Albert 
Hall (behind), London, May A, 
1971. The donkey is Fluff; 
George Clinton lolls bootless. 









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5), Alamy 


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12 
а) 
“2 


" Can you get to that: (from left) 
1968 band with Billy Nelson (left), 
Eddie Hazel (seated front), Tiki 
Fulwood (second right); Clinton 
on the warpath, New York, 1969; 
“= (below) The Parliaments, late 
= „ "505; Lucius ‘Tawl’ Ross; Ramon 
“= ‘Tiki’ Fulwood; Eddie Hazel; (inset, 
` opposite) Maggot Brain sleeve. 


<I knew that it was good beyond good, 
not only a virtuoso display of musicianship but 
also an unprecedented moment of emotion in 
pop music.” 

To emphasise Hazel’s stellar performance, 
Clinton pared back the accompaniment. “I had 
four baby junkies who decided to go to sleep 
right there on the session. I had to make a re- 
cord out of whatever I got. But the rest of the 
band sounded like shit! So I faded they ass right the fuck out.” 

Taking Hazel’s nickname, Maggot Brain, Clinton now had a title 
and a transcendent concept to ignite his work-in-progress: the ful- 
filment of Funkadelic as “a black rock group playing the loudest, 
funkiest culmination of psychedelic rock and thunderous R&B.” 





ELEASED IN JULY 1971, MAGGOT BRAIN CARRIES THE 
darkest mythology in the P-Funk cosmos. Some even said 
the title came from Clinton’s discovery of his OD’d brother 
Robert’s decomposed body in a Chicago apartment, his cracked 
head inspiring the screaming zombie female and skull of the al- 
bum's front and back covers. A story Clinton would later dismiss. 

“На ha ha! It wasn't that gory at all," he laughed during an inter- 
view with this writer in 1989. Behind a desk in Warner Brothers? 
New York boardroom, Clinton was celebrating signing to Prince's 
Paisley Park label. His face beaming from beneath multicoloured 
dreadlocks, he remembered Maggot Brain as a drug-stoked water- 
shed before Funkadelic's first line-up disintegrated, explaining, 
“We had to realise that our minds, which we thought would bring a 
solution to all the problems, were fucked up themselves." 

Born in Kannapolis, North Carolina but raised in Plainfield, 
New Jersey, Clinton had envisioned Funkadelic as a groundbreaking 
black rock'n'roll band early in their gestation backing his vocal 
group The Parliaments. The latter's early 1967 hit on the Revilot 
label, (I Wanna) Testify, had been recorded in Detroit at the end of 
Clinton's stint as a writer-producer on the Motown payroll, while 
back in Plainfield, the Silk Palace barbershop he co-owned had 
become a notorious hub for like-minded musicians and local 
crazies. It was Billy Nelson who introduced Clinton to Brooklyn- 
born Hazel, then playing sessions in nearby Newark. Ironically, 
Hazel's mother had moved them to Plainfield to avoid drugs. 

Nelson's recruits already included his guitar teacher, Lucius “Tawl’ 
Ross, and after sharing a bill in Philadelphia, veteran soul drummer 
Ramon ‘Tiki’ Fulwood was enlisted. As the expanded Parliaments 
replaced soul band suits with man-sized diapers, superfly street clob- 
ber, joke shop duck feet and, for Clinton, a hotel sheet slashed with a 
hole for his Mohican-topped head, their radical transformation was 


54 MOJO 








clinched by prodigious LSD use. 

“I guess we really did get loony and 
didn't know it," reflected Clinton. “I 
knew we made a big step. We came out 
of the ghetto, where you got to watch 
your back about everything. Now here 
I’m gonna take something that ain't got 
no reality to hold onto whatsoever, but 
it felt good. It was a permanent smile on 
my face. I don't regret nothing I did, if I did it. I try to find out 
what's the best lesson I can learn from it." 

The rock infusion amped up after Vanilla Fudge supported The 
Parliaments at a Connecticut college. When their equipment was 
delayed, Clinton's band borrowed the Fudge's Marshall stacks and, 
within weeks, boasted the same setup. Moving to Detroit during the 
riots of late July '67, The Parliaments embraced the Motor City's 
radical rock scene, sharing bills, drugs and an agent with Mitch 
Ryder and The Stooges. *Motherfuckers could get crazy without 
nobody paying them too much mind so we fitted right in," said 
Clinton, who recalled concocting a story with Iggy for the local 
press that the pair were getting married. 

“We were kindred spirits with the rock bands... We went 
directly into rock, and we flourished,” said Clinton later. “In 
Detroit, we were even hotter than Sly. We were like The Beatles 
there, the hip thing everyone knew was coming." 


ITH THE PARLIAMENTS NAME EMBROILED IN 
a contractual dispute involving the now-bankrupt 
| Revilot, Clinton brought the backing band forward with 
The Parliaments “guesting”. Detroit distributor Armen Boladian's 
Westbound Records released Funkadelic’s first 45s — the eerie hoo- 
doo of Music For My Mother and coruscating I'll Bet You (the 
turquoise labels announcing them аз “А Parliafunkadelicment 
Thang") — then March 1970's self-titled debut album. Lashed with 


scorching guitars, stoned soul vocals, booming funk grooves and 





mixing desk trickery, it recast black music for the new decade, Clin- 
ton declaring *We gonna be the blackest, we gonna be the funkiest, 
we gonna be the dirtiest...” 

During sessions, moonlighting Motown session men stepped in 
when the rhythm section mutinied over money. Most significantly, 
conservatory-educated Bernie Worrell joined on keyboards, fur- 
ther enabling Clinton's progressive rock aspirations. “Funkadelic 
was the beginning of our psychedelic era,” he said. “Jimi Hendrix 
was the king of it at that time. When I knew him as Jimmy James, he 
wasn't playing like that. Then he went over to England and did 
Are You Experienced. ‘Holy shit! He's doin’ it!’ We was already 





doing it slightly ourselves anyway." 

Funkadelic's sales were strong 
enough to justify an instant follow- 
up: July's breakthrough Free Your 
Mind... And Your Ass Will Follow. 

Clinton saw it as his Sgt. Pepper, an 
exercise in musical audacity. “That 

was blatantly psychedelic!" he told me 

in 1989. “We just said, ‘Let’s go all the 
way crazy; let's see if we can record a 
whole album while we're tripping on 
асі!” I made it up on the spot, recorded and 
mixed in one day, acided out of my mind." 

Notably, it was the first of many albums 
recorded at Detroit's venerable United Sound 
Studio, which would remain Clinton's *P-Funk 
lab” into the '80s. “We were playing stuff in the 
studio that the engineer didn't even want his 
name on," continued Clinton. *You turned on a 
Funkadelic record with earphones on, drums 
running across your head, panning the foot, we 
panned everything. Matter of fact, you didn't 
even have to be high to get into that." 

Running at only 32 minutes, Free Your Mind... 
was bookended by a mind-blowing title track 
that subverted Christian themes into acid-funk ritual, and the bi- 
zarre Eulogy And Light, offering a pimp's-eye rewrite of The Lord's 
Prayer over Funkadelic gospel track Open Your Eyes run backwards, 
offering thanks to *the Good God Big Buck". 

. FTER FREE YOUR MIND... PEAKED AT 92 ON 

A Billboard's albums chart, Clinton admitted its daring cross- 

pollination of rock and R&B was destined to confuse media 

and public both: *It's not strictly rock and roll, it's not strictly 
rhythm and blues. It's everything." 

In 2014, his view had not changed. *When we started doing 
Funkadelic we were too black for white folks and too white for black 
folks," he told me. “But the fans that liked us stayed close to us." 

1970 was Clinton's pivotal year, creatively. The Beatles, Hendrix 
and Dylan had already changed the way he thought about music, but 
he credited Eric Clapton's Cream with reintroducing him to Robert 
Johnson and the blues. *Cream taught me all about that," Clinton 
told me. “What got me the most was I found out about Robert 
Johnson from them and Гт the black guy! The reason was it was the 
kind of music older folks like my mother used to listen to, and kids 
don't like listening to their parents’ music. When I heard Eric Clap- 


GEORGE CLINTON 








p J hz 


m 
d n i "FT mo т 
FSA _ 


ton explaining who Robert Johnson 
was I felt like shit for not knowing this 
stuff already." 
However, Funkadelic would pay 
a commercial price for their main- 
man's epiphany. As Clinton recalled: 
“The radio stations said to us, 
"You're black so you can't do blues 
or rock'n'roll." 
With accidental synchronicity, 
The Parliaments returned that July 
with Osmium after Clinton signed them 
to Holland-Dozier-Holland's Invictus. 
Changing the name to Parliament, he was serv- 
ing them Funkadelic in disguise, a contractual 
bigamy that launched the P-Funk empire. 

One of the more curious outings in Clinton’s 
catalogue, Osmium further confused a public 
wrestling with Free Your Mind..., with stinging 
funk-rock missiles like Nothing Before Me But 
Thang joined by surreal curios such as Little Ole 
Country Boy’s hillbilly romp and the bagpipe- 
garnished Silent Boatman. These oddities were 
written by producer Jeffrey Bowen’s wife Ruth 
Copeland (see MOJO 262), a talented singer- 
songwriter from Consett, County Durham, who would be backed 
by Funkadelic on her Self Portrait album released that October. 

But if the baffling, scattershot scope of Parliafunkadelicment had 
yet to achieve traction, that didn’t seem to bother Clinton. In fact, 
he was about to double down. 


ECORDED AT UNITED SOUND, MAGGOT BRAIN 
was Clinton's kiss-off to the idealistic hippy epoch. “То me, 
Woodstock was the end of that whole era because it all 


became so commercial,” he told me. “Drugs even became com- 


mercial — watch out for the brown acid! Before that, acid was just 
coming out from the colleges and things were all pretty much 
straightforward for everyone. But after Woodstock you had strych- 
nine, PCP and everything that kind of got you fuzzy in the head. So 
that, for me, was the end of all that period of peace and love. The 
peace part the kids still believed in, but the system took it all over 
and co-opted it — and that’s how the bad stuff gets in.” 

One of the victims of the bad stuff was Eddie Hazel. In 1970 he 
was still at his peak — his playing a blend of fiery virtuosity and 
magical sensitivity. But he had only recently cemented his ‘Maggot 
Brain’ handle with a drug deal outside a Funkadelic gig in > 


MOJO 55 


AXE АТТАС! 


TEN FUNKADELIC FRÉTBOARD FREAKOUTS, 
MIXED BY KRIS NEEDS AND DANNY.ECCLESTON: 


I'LL BET YOU 
from Funkadelic (Westbound, 1970) 


Although covered Бу The Jackson 5 
іп 1970, Clinton had already thrown 
this old school soul taunt into 
Funkadelic’s bubbling lysergic 
cauldron, becoming their second 
single after Eddie Hazel forged the 
band’s first heavy riff - blood- 
curdling screams greeting his 
attitude-charged solo. KN 


I WANNA KNOW IF 
IT'S GOOD TO YOU? 


from Free Your Mind... And Your Ass 
Will Follow (Westbound, 1971) 
ментал | Super-stoked by its 
carnal chant, Hazel’s 
inner Hendrixreared 
W over Billy Nelson's 
®А radioactive throb 
И 1 with the priapic 
wah wah motif that earneda 
composing credit, his solo rising 
from watery moan to lascivious 
uproar (further highlighted оп the 
45 version'sinstrumental B-side). KN 


SUPER STUPID 
from Maggot Brain (Westbound, 1971) 


Angelic intro, demonic riff: the two 
faces of heroin in one monstrous 
song, with Hazel again leading the 
way - although Tawl Rossis no 
slouch either - while shakers outline 
a skeletal boogie. The fade сап 
barely suppress the axe freakery. DE 


MAGGOT BRAIN 
from Live (Westbound, 1996) 


You’ve just sparked 
| upa monster 
| ‘doobie’ at 
Meadowbrook іп 
Rochester, Michigan 
| on September 12, 
1971 as the soon-to- -quit Hazel lays 
on youhis soul-stripping elegy. For 
14 minutes. Newbie drummer 
Tyrone Lampkin sounds just as 
unnerved, frankly. DE 


MISS LUCIFER’S LOVE 

from America Eats Its Young 

(Westbound, 1972) 

ы „АШЫШЫ of America... 1$ 

а a grab-bag of 
transitional 
Funkadelic line-ups. 
Guitarist Garry 
sssseus — “№ Shiderand Bootsy 

d Phelps Collins are beddingin, 

but here the fuzz-wah vocalese and 

sky-scraping perma-soloing could 

only come from one man's plectrum. 

It’s Eddie Hazel. DE 


56 MOJO 


COSMIC SLOP 
from Cosmic Slop (Westbound, 1973) 


~ | Clinton’s bleak 
| spiritual hymn 
„| abouta hustling 
| ghetto mother 
~ | begging forgiveness 
З inspired Garry 
Shider finest оса multiple 
guitars from Detroit heavyweight 
Ron Bykowski and Shider wailing 
from the tenements like lost souls 
over Bootsy’s (uncredited) 
coiled-spring riff. KN 


GOOD THOUGHTS, 
BAD THOUGHTS 


from Standing On The Verge Of 
Getting It On (Westbound, 1974) 


Verge was Наге!'5 
‚| official return to the 
Funkadelic fold after 
—-| his Invictus trip, and 
this his nine-minute 
| | brown study. Lyrical 
curlicues shimmer and deliquesce 
while Clinton imparts spiritual 
mumbo-jumbo т а comical basso 
profundo. “Bullshit thoughts rot 
your meat” - dig? DE 


GET OFF YOUR ASS 
AND JAM 


from Let's Take It To The Stage 
( Ш 1975) 


With Hazel 
incarcerated, Rare 
Earth guitarist Paul 
| Warren was paid 50 
4 dollars їо overdub 
the squalling guitar 
В а: Funk 
stage chantin one of Funkadelic’s 
most blatant rock onslaughts (his 
lacerating intro later looped т 
Public Enemy’s Bring The Noise). KN 


I WANT YOU | 
(SHE'S SO HEAVY) 
from Eddie Hazel - Games, 
Dames And Guitar Thangs 
(Warner Bros, 1977) 


pi: HAZEL | Even constructed 
| ж from outtakes and 
б „л {| covers, Hazel’s опе 
» ~ | solo ЕР dazzled with 
= | anastonishing liquid 
virtuosity to earn the 
Hendrix comparisons. Lennon’s epic 
Abbey Road catharsis inspired one 
of his greatest flights, ingeniously 
ascending the stratosphere over 
nine mesmerising minutes. KN 


WHO SAYS A FUNK 
BAND CAN'T PLAY 
ROCK? 


from One Nation Under A Groove 
(Warner Bros, 1978) 
By this time 
Parliamentand 
| Funkadelic were 
-| sharing the 
1 proprietary bounce 
lı isse wethinkof asthe 
P- Funk sound. But‘Throbbasonic 
Funkgeetarists’ Garry Shider and 
Michael Hampton still blaze on the 
saw-toothed riff and, from halfway, 
almost constant soloing. Relent- 
lessly catchy. DE 





























<< Boston — an anecdote immortalised in the Maggot Brain track 
Super Stupid. “Super Stupid bought a nickel bag,” ran Clinton’s 
lyric. “Thought it was coke but it was skag.” 

But Hazel's wild riffing on the track sounds anything but 
gouched out. “Eddie was a really funny guy, always laughing,” says 
his friend the drummer Jerome ‘Bigfoot’ Brailey. “But he was also 
real sensitive. He would just break down and start crying for no 
reason. He wasn’t ego’d-out about playing. He was really soulful.” 

The guitarist was not the only volatile element in Maggot Brain’s 
chemistry. Loud conflict erupted during the sessions, as Bernie 
Worrell was forced to moderate between bassist — and supposed 
bandleader — Billy Nelson’s drug-fuelled “short man rage” (as Clin- 
ton called it) and older Parliaments Grady Thomas, Fuzzy Haskins, 
Calvin Simon and Ray Davis. Musically, too, it was Worrell’s job to 
add sensitivity to proceedings, just as his scintillating jazz organ 
leavens Hit It Or Quit It’s proto-metal bombast. “Bernie was a 
musical genius,” Clinton explained. “With Bernie we could paint 
with more colours... Bernie could take any groove and make it 
Beethoven, Bach or any jazz thing you want it to be.” 

The music Funkadelic unleashed on Maggot Brain sounded like 
its title. It wriggled with ideas: some ecstatic, some seemingly ran- 
dom, some disturbing. In its final form, the trip begins with Clinton 
intoning, “Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time/For y’all 
have knocked her up" as Tawl Ross's gentle chords lay a ghostly bed 
for the melancholy majesty of Hazel's entry. It ends in the tradition 
of insane Funkadelic album closers, with Wars Of Armageddon 
addressing America's psychic investment in war over its surging 
guitar mayhem, and a Revolution 9-like collage including sirens 
COWS, screams, orgasms and robust flatulence: *all-out psychede- 
lia", as Clinton would later note. *What had been an implication 
before," he added, *was now a masterplan." 

Clinton wanted Maggot Brain's cover to match the music's dark 
affront, first considering a pearl-fanged female vampire looming 
over squeezed-out tampons before conceding, “It was a bit 
extreme, even for us!" 

Apocalyptic sleevenotes quoted The Process Church Of The 
Final Judgement sect, as would some forthcoming P-Funk albums. 
Originally a controversial Scientology splinter group started in the 
mid-'60s, the Process Church believed they were visionaries 
warning of the coming apocalypse, inevitably drawing Manson com- 
parisons. But it was hard to separate acid-fuelled Clinton mischief 
from genuine evangelism, and some said the ‘Process’ referred to the 


hair straightening-services provided by his Plainfield barbershop. 


UNKADELIC HAD GIGGED THROUGH 1970’S 
intense recording schedule. In October’s Creem magazine 
Geoffrey Jacques described a typical show: “When the 
Parliament/Funkadelic trample on stage, everything is suddenly 
transformed. It’s just like hearing rock and roll or John Coltrane for 
the first time... 
fervour, as if you were witnessing a service at a store-front sanctified 


church... 


crowd, Red Indian headdress streaming after him, and emerge 


The bizarre act is attacked with an almost religious 
George Clinton has been known to bound into the 


wearing nothing more than a scarlet jockstrap.” 

With Maggot Brain finished, the band toured UK colleges and 
clubs in May 1971. Clinton’s self-described “freaked-out, psyche- 
delically wrecked black rock’n’ rollers” horrified soul fans expecting 
(I Wanna) ‘Testify, while their scantily-clad antics made waves after 
they headlined over the Groundhogs at the Lincoln Festival. 

The band relished their first time in the UK, posing for Maggot 
Brain’s inner sleeve photo in Liverpool after visiting its Beatles land- 
marks and hitting London’s hip boutiques, but it was not without 
hitch. Having cancelled a Mothers Of Invention show in February 
on the strength of their lewd lyrics, the Royal Albert Hall pulled 
Funkadelic after manager Marian Herrod saw Free Your Mind...’s 
album cover. Accompanied by press photographers, the band duly 
turned up at the nearby Albert Memorial with a hired donkey, who 
defecated on its steps, joined by Clinton's pet pig Mr Dibbles. After 
the Lyceum also baulked, Funkadelic played London gigs at the 


п 


Getty, Avalon, photo credit Warner Records, courtesy Ace Record 








Speakeasy, the Country Club, and 
the Roundhouse in Camden. 
"Even now in America we're not 
fully accepted," Clinton told 
the UK's Disc & Music Echo. 
"People are still analysing us. 
That's what's great about 
Britain: nobody tries to analyse 
us, they just dig the music." 

Stalling at 108 in the Billboard 
albums chart, Maggot Brain marked 
the last time the original Funkadelic 
creatively combusted in the studio. 
Already upset that a payrise request by 
the younger Funkadelic musicians had 
been rejected, Billy ‘Bass’ Nelson quit 
when Clinton made Bernie Worrell 
musical director. Joining him in a move to 
Los Angeles to work with Invictus acts 
including Chairmen Of The Board, and 
later The Temptations, was his friend and 
fellow junkie Eddie Hazel. 

Then, before Clinton could fire him — 
ostensibly for his heroin use — ‘Tiki’ 
Fulwood was headhunted by Miles Davis. 

“We were at Paul's Mall [in Boston], 
recalled Bernie Worrell. *We had just come 
off and Miles walked in, stood in the middle 
of the doorway, didn't say a word, just 
stared. You know those eyes of his when he 
stared at you; that shit go right through you. 
Ain't nobody say nothing. He just looked, 
then turned and left. Next day, Tiki was gone." 

If Fulwood and Hazel, even Nelson, would 
return, on and off, Tawl Ross would not. In Rob 
Bowman's sleevenote for Music For Your Mother: 
Funkadelic 45s, Nelson recalled the night in Canada 
when Ross swallowed six tabs of yellow sunshine 
before snorting multiple lines of industrial-strength 
methedrine. ^He was hallucinating so bad that 
I could see the hallucinations," recalled Nelson. 
“I could see him sitting in the hotel room talking to : 
his mother, who had been dead for at least seven or eight years. 
I had a little acid in myself so I could actually see what he was 
seeing... leaning over a coffin talking to his mother and his mother 
leaning out of the coffin talking back to him... When we got to that 
gig Там] was totally out of it and he stayed that way.” 


S ROSS BECAME P-FUNK'S SYD BARRETT FIGURE, 
silent until his gently hallucinogenic 1995 solo album, 
Giant Shirley, Clinton directed his ever-expanding 
Parliafunkadelicment army until eventually breaking into the 


JEROME 'BIGFOOT' BRAILEY 


Ma Got GRATIS 





SUN 9.21 JA Ta 


чы» 4 


Telling porkies: (above, from left) the 
band admire Clinton's Mr Dibbles; 
The Process Church of the Final 
Judgement, Cambridge, MA, 1973. The 
establishment's proclamations would 
influence the tenor of Funkadelic 
and Parliament sleevenotes. Or not; 
(insets) guitar seer Eddie Hazel; 
Maggot Brain's back sleeve. 














commercial stratosphere with 

1975's Mothership Connection. 

The ensuing Earth tour took 

a spectacular show to 20,000- 

capacity arenas normally filled by 
rock's biggest bands. 

By the early 1980s, however, 
Clinton's empire had buckled under its 
own weight and his own addiction to crack 
cocaine. He would periodically reinvent 
himself, and his musical vehicles, before 
regrouping the Parliament-Funkadelic 
ensemble as the P-Funk All Stars, thereby 
sidestepping the latest legal issues, in 1983. 
During the three subsequent decades he 
has become celebrated as one of music’s 
great characters and innovators, an inter- 
national treasure. 

Eddie Hazel continued to contribute to 
albums by both Funkadelic and Parliament 
franchises, notably on the former’s Standing 
On The Verge Of Getting It On and the latter’s 
Up For The Down Stroke (both 1974). Later 
that year, after smoking PCP on a flight to 
Los Angeles, Hazel freaked out — claiming 
to have seen UFOs out the window — and assaulted 
cabin crew. Arrested and subsequently jailed for a 
year, he was replaced, by Clinton, with guitarist 
Michael Hampton. 

In 1977, Hazel released his only solo album, 
Games, Dames And Guitar Thangs. An influence on 
artists as diverse as John Frusciante, Primal 
Scream and Ween, Hazel died in 1992 of liver 
failure after years of drug and alcohol abuse. 

“The truly genius are like that, they’re 
tormented,” said Clinton’s early collaborator and lifelong friend 
Sidney Barnes. “He had too many demons.” 

Fifty years on, Eddie Hazel’s spirit still courses through the 
album that is his namesake. In your writer’s quarter-century 
interviewing George Clinton, the few times his mood dipped from 
worldly-wise effervescence was at mention of Hazel’s name. Other 
interviewers found the same. 

"Ah, Mr Maggot Brain,” he told John Corbett, two years 
after Hazel’s death. “He just felt everything. His music will be 


м, 


here forever.” 


MOJO 57 


















































DESIGNED "5 
RECORD SLEEVES FROM IN THE 
CITY TO ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS, 
WITH THE AID OF SOME BATHROOM 
TILES AND A DOG CALLED MAX. 
"IT WAS AN AWFUL LOT OF FUN,” 
HE TELLS 


ROM THE MOMENT Polydor art director Bill Smith saw The Jam on-stage, 
at the Greyhound in Fulham, he could see the cover of their debut album, 
In The City, in his mind’s eye. “I had this story in my head,” he tells MOJO 
today. “The Jam were being chased by arival band or gang, and they’d 
hidden in this underground toilet, where they spray-painted their logo.” 

Since underground toilets are not ideal photographic locations, 
Smith and snapper Martyn Goddard built one in the studio: “So the 
morning of the shoot me and Martyn put up these two two-metre by 
one-metre boards and tiled them ourselves.” Smith sprayed the logo in 
one go. “I can’t remember having a plan of what it would look like,” he 
says. “Luckily it turned out all right - imagine if I'd messed it up?” 

After the group had been photographed in front of Smith’s creation, he tooka 
hammer to К: “1 said to Martyn, I'm going to be one of the rival gang or band and 
I've just seen their logo and I'm gonna smash it up. So! knocked it about a bit, and 
we shot it with the three shadows on it, and that was the back cover.” 

For three concentrated years, Smith was responsible for all Jam record sleeves. 
They take pride of place in Cover Stories, a new, richly annotated collection of his 
cover art that includes quirky, arresting work for Genesis, The Cure, King Crimson 
and Sigue Sigue Sputnik. Yet his relationship with The Jam was formative and 
featured increasing input from Paul Weller. “For Setting Sons, Paul explained his 
concept -of these three school friends who go to war,” says Smith. Photographer 
Andrew Douglas agreed that a statue of soldiers would give an aptly elegiac feel, 
but public statuary is often high up on plinths and the angles are problematic. 
Then Douglas found The St John's Ambulance Bearers: a small, 1919 bronze by 
Benjamin Clemens in the Imperial War Museum. Shot close-up, 
itcombined monumentalism with a moving intimacy. 

“| put in the moody, cloudy sky to add a touch of realism," 
says Smith. “Early versions were embossed, so the figures 
were in kind of bas-relief, giving it more of a tomb-like quality." 

Smith left his mark on Jam covers in more ways than one. 
That's him on the A299, in a moody shot by Martyn Goddard on 
the sleeve of the Strange Town single. “But by the time of Sound 
Affects, Paul had basically become the art director," he concedes. "He 
gave me the BBC Sound Effects record and showed me what he wanted 
changing. He said, Just give me some pictures that relate to the songs." нч 

Between them, Smith and Goddard filled the squares. The telephone 
box was in Gravesend, where Smith lived; the dog - named Max - belonged 
to his partner's parents. Goddard shotthe hearse in Islington and the baby was 


< “ТАЮ THIS STORAN: 
afriend's. But it was the last significant piece of artwork that Smith would create | | | | 1 h | 
for The Jam. The Munch illustration on the Funeral Pyre sleeve was brought т by | | е u UA | 
Weller; Smith directed the video but had another, for Absolute Beginners, rejected | | | 
(it was screened а the Jam exhibition, About The Young Idea, at Somerset House WERE BEING CHASED RY 
in 2015). After that, they went their separate ways. | Ш. 
Cover Stories includes iconic Smith sleevesfor The Cure's Three Imaginary Boys "T T өтт "ү 
and Genesis's Abacab (picked from Smith's sketch book by Mike Rutherford after the A p [ VA | BA К | | | [ Д N | 
| i | | " 

AND THEY D HIDDEN IN 
Cover Stories: The Album Art Of Bill Smith Studio 1977-2019, is published by Red Planet Books | | i | S | \ DERGROUND 
on April 27 priced at £25. Order at www.redplanetbooks.com. T |) | F T dd 1 | | | \ M i T H 
| LI Е = | | | 


band knocked backthe illustrator he originally proposed) and much more. But it's 
58 MOJO 











rareforasleeve designerto embed with an artistin the way he did with The Jam. 

"| was incredibly lucky to work with a band from their first bit of recorded 
music,” says Smith. “Five album covers and 16 or 17 single bags is not bad going 
-a lot of workin a short space of time. And it was an awful lot of fun.” М; 




















Martyn Goddard 





Direction, reaction, creation: 

(main image) Bill Smith on the set 
of his first Jam sleeve design, 1977; 
(insets: this row, from left) In The 
City (1977); This Is The Modern World 
(1977); David Watts/‘A’ Bomb In 
Wardour Street (1978); 

(middle row, from left) Down In The 
Tube Station At Midnight (1978); 
All Mod Cons (1978); Strange Town 
(1979); Setting Sons (1979); 

(bottom row, from left) BBC Sound 
Effects No. 1 (1969), the inspiration 
for Sound Affects (1980); Funeral Pyre 
(1981); Absolute Beginners (1981). 





THE JAM 


ELA. Т 
а me). 


ioo» OU ТУ D... 





nS m r P nr! = 





thirty years since 

its rippling vistas 

| redefined rock 
50ПіС5, 

E 

obsessive-in-chief 

kevin shields has 

| remastered loveless 

lag — again. yet in his 

Ad T oddball world, 

TES ae this is prosress. 

N and there's new 

music too — if he 

сап (A зо of it. 

“i know less about 

what I'm finishing 

now than did two 

years ago, he warns 

keith cameron. 











photography by 
joe dilworth. 





Tune in, turn it up: 

My Bloody Valentine in 
London, October 1988 
(from left) Kevin Shields, 
Debbie Googe, Colm 

Ó Ciosóig, Bilinda Butcher. 


Joe Dilworth 


MOJO 61 










NE DAY IN 1996, KEVIN 
Shields was summoned from 
his south London HQ to the 
Hammersmith offices of 
Island Records. His band My 
Bloody Valentine had signed to 
the major label in October 
1992, 11 months after the release 
of Loveless, an album made under 
such stressful circumstances over three 
years it fractured their relationship with indie 
rock bastion Creation, yet was acclaimed by 
critics in terms that stretched the limits of 
hyperbole. “Its creative inspiration defies be- 
lief,” Select’s Andrew Perry gasped; “A virtual 
reinvention of the guitar,” Q’s Martin Aston 
declared; “The outermost, innermost, 
uttermost rock record of 1991,” Melody 
Maker’s Simon Reynolds swooned. 
Thanks to the painful birth and staggering 
realisation of Loveless, the 29-year-old Shields 
was anointed with the mystic hue of a pioneer, 
a post-punk Brian Wilson. Island outbid 
every other record company for his signature, 
and now looked forward to their avant-pop 
genius delivering the future of rock music. 
Four years later, the sum total of My 
Bloody Valentine’s post-Loveless releases 
amounted to two cover versions: Wire’s Map 
Reference 41?N 93°W, for a tribute record 
called Whore, and John Barry’s James Bond 
theme We Have All The Time In The World, 
for Peace Together, a charity album for youth 
organisations in Northern Ireland. Both were 
respectful acts of homage rather than radical 
new designs. Island had invested in the band 
to the extent of paying them to buy a house 
and build a studio, yet still awaited a My 
Bloody Valentine album. 
^| was called to a meeting,” Shields says 
today from his home in rural Ireland. “They 
said, ‘There’s three bands on our label and 
you all have something in common. You’ve all 
built your own studios, you’re all totally inde- 
pendent, you all smoke a lot of pot, and you’re 
all late. It’s you, the Stereo MCs and The Orb. 
p 5 The first one to hit £500,000 in advances and 
© costs gets the TUR pulled. ' And I guess we 


tty, Camera Press/Ed Sirrs 


won that race.’ 

Shields chuckles at the notion of My 
Bloody Valentine winning a race of any kind. 
Island's high-ups were true to their word: in 


1997, Shields’ monthly retainer of £5,000 


Courtesy of David Conway, 


62 MOJO 











was stopped, with the suggestion he go on the dole to complete the 
album. “I was like, “That’s actually fraud — I'm not gonna pretend 
I'm looking for work when I’m finishing an album for a major 
record company." 

By that point, My Bloody Valentine effectively no longer existed. 
Both drummer Colm Ó Ciosóig and bassist Debbie Googe departed 
the communal house-cum-studio during 1995. Singer-guitarist 
Bilinda Butcher hung on until '97, though by her own subsequent 
admission, as Shields’ ex-partner it might have been healthier had 
she left earlier. *Everything was supposed to be so good when we 
moved to the house and in some way everything just became so bad 

instead," she said. Googe later reflected: *We 
were essentially all mental." 

Each was wrung out by the psychological 
strain of making an album to the beat of Kevin 
Shields' obsessive instincts, a process under- 
mined and obscured by studio technical 
problems, intra-band conflict, and much 
dope-smoking. At least the others could leave: 
Shields, the band's musical visionary, had no 
option but to navigate the meandering 
topography of his mind. An exit strategy pre- 
sented itself in late 1997 when Primal Scream 
invited him to remix their song If They Move, 
Kill 'Em, which led to him joining the band as 
auxiliary on-stage guitarist: this semi-perma- 
nent posting to a rock'n'roll version of the 
French Foreign Legion lasted until 2006, and 
liberated Shields from his inner stasis. 

“It wasn't so much that I had felt this 
pressure to follow up Loveless, it was more like 
the practical world around us was, as usual, 
pretty unstable," he says. "And by the time it 
stabilised, it took a few years, mainly because 
the band broke up in the middle." 

In tandem with his Primal Scream 
furlough, Shields’ rapprochement with the 
world beyond his head yielded four pieces for 
Sofia Coppola’s 2003 film Lost In Translation, 
a commission which entailed writing new mu- 
sic somewhat in the style of his old band. The 
soundtrack became as celebrated as the film: 
in absentia, My Bloody Valentine’s memory 


-ag ы ДЕ 1 had become mythologised by 
L у c a new generation, for whom 
= 2 sustain the term ‘shoegaze’ was 
SM ’ | untainted by the pejorative 








> “a f connotations of its origins as 

a jab at the early '90s slew of 

nd — post-MBV groups that 
wAKE МРТ HEJNA "included Ride and Slowdive. 
ER ' And although it's easy to 

PAUL well - assume an inevitability about 





















loud is your 
baby?’” 











Electric warrior: Kevin Shields 
in 1990, with his favoured 
Fender Jazzmaster and Jaguar 
guitars; (opposite, from left) 
Kevin plays MBV’s debut gig, | Г. 
Ivy Rooms, Dublin, August 17, 
1983; with Patti Smith at the 
2008 ATP festival; Shields with 
Primal Scream, 1999; (insets, 
right) Loveless; the Whore 
Wire tribute album; Shields’ 
Primal Scream remix; Patti 

& Kevin’s The Coral Sea. 




















My Bloody Valentine’s eventual О | its 1988 predecessor Isn't Anything, plus 
pe 














reunion — first as a live entity in four contemporaneous EPs. Although 


2008, then at last releasing a the releases were delayed until 2012 by 
what Shields terms “bullshit complicated 


record company problem rea- 


new album, m b v, in 2013 — 

Shields attributes another collaboration as the pivotal factor: 
two shows in 2005 and 2006 where he improvised accompa- 
niment to The Coral Sea, Patti Smith's poetic tribute to Robert step in his journey of self-redis- 
Mapplethorpe. There was, he suggests, a benedictory quality to . covery. While disinterring the 
Smith's approach that allowed him to safely reconcile with his past. Creation era, Shields discovered 


sons”, they represented a further 


“Patti was the catalyst for me to go back and re-explore every- a pile of CDs containing work 
thing, the way I used to do it. My time with Primal Scream wasan | from 1996-97, the tail end of his 
experiment in creating sounds that fit in with things. Very much not attempts to make an album for 
how I play guitar with My Bloody Valentine, where I use a tremolo Island, at which point he was 
arm, it's expressive... it has to be the whole sound. When Patti РАСИТЕ working іп the Streatham studio 
asked me to do that, I got inspired. I spent an evening familiarising SS = у в £ . alone, save Юг an initial period 
myself with all these guitars and tunings I hadn't touched since | 6 ww 1 where Spring Heel Jack's engi- 
'96 or '97. We didn't rehearse. It was a wonderful opportunity "€ | E- neer Mads Bjerke tutored him in 
to work with somebody who was truly a kind of genius at being ШВ | drum’n’bass production techniques 
improvisational. I was virtually hypnotised by her to do that. It P. iw = Г (which Shields and О Cíosóig had 
was a real turning point.” aor ; Gee ЧО been labouring to teach themselves 

In 2006, Shields began remastering My Bloody Valentine's жыз. ЖУ [ог two years). Listening to this mu- 
1988-91 output for a proposed reissue campaign by Sony, which SS Ce E Ш sic from the perspective of 10 years 


©) Е = 1 А А 
upon the demise of Creation had inherited the rights to Loveless, F Ш E hindsight was revelatory. > 


MOJO 63 


= “Ву 2006 I realised this record I was making was really valid,” 
he says. “It wasn't just a collection of songs — the mood and the 
attitude and what I was doing was really worth finishing." 

Reconvening the classic My Bloody Valentine line-up in 2008 
floored audiences, not only with the infamous MBV volume levels 
— the band paid for earplugs to be distributed at gigs and festivals — 
but also the music's enduring currency. Then in February 2013, 
following a surprise announcement on the band's website, the long- 
awaited m b v finally appeared. 

This relationship between past, present and future continues to 
drive Shields today, at his home studio, where he's been concur- 
rently working on the next My Bloody Valentine album — or EPs, or 
both — and overseeing the latest catalogue spruce-up. MBV's new 
record label Domino is rolling out a 1988-2013 reissue campaign, 
restoring the albums to streaming services, with CDs and vinyl to 
follow. According to Domino, ‘Deluxe’ vinyl versions of Isn't Any- 
thing and Loveless have been mastered from "full analog cuts for the 
first time since 1991” while ‘Standard’ versions feature “brand new 
digital cuts”. Comprehensively, or confusingly, 2-CD versions of 
Loveless contain two copies of the album: one from an analog master, 
one from an “original” digital master. As for m b v, it will now be 
available *across physical formats globally for the first time ever". 

Although Shields appreciates such seemingly abstruse details, 
for him the primary reason for revisiting his back pages yet again is 
to make them widely available; in 2018, with the Creation catalogue 
still Sony's domain, Shields' analog remasters of Isn't Anything and 
Loveless were a limited self-release (likewise m b v). “And then,” he 
says, “we got free. This is the first time the vinyl has been available 
properly for 30 years. So that's the motivation — to have vinyl not 
selling at 250 quid." 

Anyone thinking this must be the last word in audiophile MBV 
estate management would be mistaken, though. Shields hopes to do 
a half-speed mastered, 45 rpm version of Loveless this year, if Covid 








To hear knows when: the reunited 
My Bloody Valentine play the 


Coachella Music Festival, Indio, 
California, April 19, 2009; (above) 
with the Classic Album award at 
2008’s MOJO Honours List (from left) 
Shields, O Ciosóig, Butcher, Googe. 


permits a visit to the mastering studio. “Purely for audio reasons, 
it'd be nice,” he says. “I’m not finished with Loveless at all.” 


Can you possibly feel excited at going into a studio and listening 
intently to Loveless once again? 


It’s like a never-ending workin progress. Every time! approach it, | hear it 
differently. Loveless is extremely... not fragile exactly, because it could be 
in any environment and still sound like itself. But each time, it’s a little 
mountain to climb. It's not the easiest thing to get right. And it's enjoyable, 
actually. But | wouldn't want to be only doing remasters for the rest of my 
life. For the past few weeks it’s felt like a real luxury to get back to new 
music. It reminds me how much | don’t want to repeat myself, and do 
something different. 


How was it “getting free" from Sony? 


Inthe end it was all pretty civil and reasonable. But with the remastering 
work I did т 2006, we discovered Sony had withheld a significant amount 
of money. So it took between 2006 and 2012 to persuade them to pay us 
money we had already earnt. There's a pretty extreme story, with usin the 
background, that will be told someday. They were terrible people. By 
2012, the people there were significantly nicer and cooler. 


Did that make Creation's foibles seem quite innocentin comparison? 


Notreally. Creation was messy. Very, very messy. Alan [McGee] and Dick 
[Green, Creation co-owners] were only a couple of years older than us 
when we started Loveless. They were in Biff Bang Pow! - that wastheirtotal 
experience of recording albums. Suddenly, they've got me on their hands, 
who'sina totally different headspace. They found itincomprehensible, 
and I found their behaviour incomprehensible. We were all doing it for the 
first time, and it was chaotic. 


In 2007, Alan McGee described My Bloody Valentine as “my comedy 
band... a joke”. Was that hurtful? 


You know, he's said so much over the years. Reality is a whole other story. 
He was never around when we made records. He wasn'tinvolved in the 
process on any imaginable level. We weren't his anything. In fact, the 
bands were divided between Dick Green and Alan, and we were one of 
"Dick's bands". Alan was just somebody who had an opinion after the fact. 
You know there's now a Creation film? 


Are you portrayed init? 

Minimally. | think the director [Nick Moran] included us because the 
screenplay, or whatever you want to call it, was done by... what's his 
name? Trainspotting guy... 


Irvine Welsh. 
Yeah. He doesn't really know what happened at Creation, so you wind up 


© loveless is like 
’ апеуег-епатз 
work т progress. 
every time i 
approach it, 
i hear it 
differently.” 


Getty (2) 


with this not particularly engaging story. Sothe director fashioned 
something more believable, and included us. No speaking, just me giving 
Alan the finger when he’s trying to get into the studio. That never 
happened. п '89, we were recording an EP and Alan came down. Не 
hadn't been there at allin’88, so this is our first experience of Alan McGee 
in the studio. He was going, “It has to be the best thing in the world...” 
After a few hours of Alan's ranting, we'd decided, “We don't need this 
person around us when we're making music." He went out for coffee, and 
Isaid tothe engineer, "Close the doorand lockit." Alan was incredulous. 
Later that year, we were starting Loveless and it wasn't going very well, and 
he came down. | had fashioned this acoustic guitar with a tremolo. He 
picked itup, pulled the tremolo arm up as 

opposed to down, and immediately broke a 

string. | was like, “What did you just do?!" He got 

so flustered, like, “Maybe | shouldn't be here.” 

When we finished Loveless, | played it back to 

him. He said, “That sounds expensive. You're 

either John Lennon or you're fucking nuts.” 

| was neither, butthere you go. 


MERICAN-BORN IO IRISH 
parents who relocated the family to 
Dublin when he was 10, Shields 
moved back to Ireland in 2015. Although 
he retains a studio in London, he no longer 
has a flat there. *We got these big dogs," he 
says. “Well, they were little dogs, but ` 





they're Pyrenees Mountain Dogs and they 
grew big. The point being that we didn't 
like leaving them after a while. I would go 
over to London to work, but Anna, my 
wife, just stayed. That became less fun." 

Theoretically, a house in the scenic Irish 
countryside with its own recording studio 
and no neighbours wouldn't be the worst 
place for a musician to ride out a global 
pandemic. But Shields has had “plenty of 
other shit going down," he says. “Sick 
family members, not being allowed to see 
them. Otherwise, it's OK, because we kind 
of work from home. So it's been kind of 
normal. But not." 

In a 2018 interview for Fender, Shields 
offered a glimpse of his home working 
arrangements. Surrounded by guitars, 
explaining the Jazzmaster's intrinsic role in 
his hallmark technique, he also talked 
about m b v, something he didn't do very 
much around its low-key release, apart 
from *a handful of interviews after the fact. 
What I did say was, ‘In a few years’ time 
this record will make а lot of sense.” 





Itis, as he explains now, a long story. But 
essentially, m b v anticipated the apocalyptic 
state of the world today, as foreseen in 
Kevin's mind circa 1996 amid a four-year 
“consciousness-changing experience” 
involving Qigong meditation and extensive 
study of Jung’s psychological theories. At 
the apex of the cocaine-fuelled Britpop- 
booming '90s, Shields intuited the 
impending bust. *I saw a pattern of 
nostalgia," he says. “А saying-goodbye 
quality. And also a resolution towards 
something new at the same time. Rebirth 





involves pain, and huge stress. The record 
that І was making іп '96, and '97 was 
reflecting this feeling where I was pretty 
sure the world we thought we were moving 
into was not going to happen. That we're 
actually at the end of something." 

Upon revisiting the music 10 years later, 
Shields felt encouraged to see the journey 


through, completing the album during 2011 and 2012. The penul- 
timate track, the unrelenting militaristic churn of Nothing Is, 
represented doomsday, while the closing Wonder 2 was the sound 
of rebirth, with all its attendant hope and fear. *In that 2018 Fender 
interview, I was saying stuff like ‘the bad guys’ time is coming, it’s 
people time now.’ Six months later, Greta Thunberg and Extinction 
Rebellion kick in. When I was making that music, it was like a 
graffiti tag, saying ‘I was there’. It’s a mood of our time." 


Presumably, mid-Covid, m bv feels even more prescient to you? 


Thatrecord is going to be relevantfora very 
long time. This is a turning point in the world's 
existence, basically. We can’t pretend the 
environment isn’t fucked. We can’t pretend 
society isn’t broken. Covid just shines a huge 
light on everything and says, ‘This is shit.’ 


How does that situation affect the next My 
Bloody Valentine record? 


Well, I'm in a funny place. We started off trying 
to make an EP, that we were going to release in 
2018. Then an album. Maybe two EPs? But that 
seemed too constricting. Until last year, | had 
the structure: we had 15 songs, vocals on some 
ofthem, mostly guitars and drums. Atthe start, 
Ifeltthis need to make a record that was warm 
and personable and nottoo strange. Then 
during this past year, everything has changed. 
Thistime has created a need to do something 
a bit different. So I'm winding up with a glut of 
material; we’re gonna have two albums and 

a couple of EPs. I know less about what I'm 
finishing now than | did two years ago. But it 
feels really vital. 


How’s your hearing these days? 


It’s OK. Compared to most people my age, it’s 
fine. But it was always better than average, so 

| guess all the damage has brought me to a 
place that’s average. But absolutely we got 
damaged from it. With My Bloody Valentine 
live, whatever people out front thought about 
it, where | was it was worse. 


And was that necessary - was it worth it? 


Oh yeah. If you play a drum kit in any fashion 
considered vaguely normal, it’s immediately а 
very loud instrument. And when you want the 
music around to sound balanced, you're in a 
situation where it's 120 decibels - or 115, with 
peaks up to 120. That’s the natural volume of 
most music. Even orchestral musichas peaks of 
120 decibels, and people are afraid to play 
certain composers becausethe pieces are so 
loud. There's a reality to music. It's like a baby 
crying. When friends of mine had children, 
because | had an obsession with measuring 
decibels (laughs) | gave them decibel meters. 

| said, "I want to know how loud is your baby?" 
It was 122 decibels. A baby’s like, “I can be 
louder than anything.” So a baby’s louder than 
is ‘reasonable’. This is what I'm saying: what's 
reasonable volume, and what's reality, are two 
different things. ‘Reasonable volume’ is a social 
concept. It's an idea. In reality, musicis loud. 


Yet you'rea quiet person. Do you greet each 
day with hope? 


| do. With the family medical stuff, being in 

а situation where you're made powerless was 
really unpleasant, and ifthis kind ofthing 
becomes the norm І can see people just 
exploding. There's a growing awareness that 
the systems we've arrived at after thousands of 
years of social development aren't good at 
dealing with big crises. Because it's just people 
ofacertaintype in positions of authority and 
power, and that doesn't really work in the big 
picture. So, yeah, | feel positive. We're in for lots 
of ominous, don’t-know-what-the-fuck-is- 
going-to-happen-ness. And also lots of 
positive change. So that’s where we're at. And 

| feel lucky to be able to do this right now. (3 


MOJO 65 














DEALT COVID LEMONS, MOJO’S GUEST EDITOR 

HAS BEEN BUSY MAKING LEMONADE: AN ALBUM 
OF 12 SINGLES, FULL OF SPUNK AND SOUL. BUT 
PRODUCTIVITY HAS ITS SHADOW SIDE, WHEN YOU 
HEAR TIME’S CLOCK CLICK EVER LOUDER AND 
YOU CAN’T TOUR TILL 2022. “TLL BE 64 THAT YEAR,” 
ee WER) TED KESSLER = 

A FUNNY OLD AGE TO GO BACK ON THE ROAD.” 


4 = LOsKOLEL 77:38 4:9 2:2 NICOLE NODLAND 































2 HEN THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC FIRST SUNK ITS 
teeth into Britain, shutting the nation down in March 
2020, Paul Weller was presented with what appeared to be 

an insurmountable problem. 

His new album, the free-spirited On Sunset, was due to be 






released that June. He had a lavish live reading of it planned, 

with strings and brass, but very quickly it became apparent 
that there would be no live performances allowed that year. 
Weller was distraught. He believed that On Sunset’s soulful, 
softly psychedelic stylings delivered a career highlight. He was 
proud of it. He didn’t want it to flash brightly upon release and 
then vanish. Peering into his back catalogue, he had flicked 
through 45 years of recordings with The Jam, The Style Council 
| andasasolo artist to select songs that could slot pleasurably into 
а setlist driven by the new album. “I had the perfect show de- 
signed in my mind,” he says, wistfully. “I still have it.” 

He had to let it go. But he didn't mope. Instead, he started writing. 
And less than a year later, Weller has another album in the can: Fat Pop 
(Volume 1). It's not been compiled from On Sunset's brightest off-cuts, 
however. It's an all-new 12-song burst of three-minute knee-tremblers, a 
path of instant melodic gratification Weller has not mapped as delib- 
erately on any of its recent predecessors, but for which he has 
some notable form. They're “pop songs, in old money,” he says. 
It's the third distinct prong on a remarkable late-career 
renaissance that began with 2018's pastoral inner-vi- 


sions, True Meanings. > 
PAUL WELLER 1 RUE MEANINGS 





ow STN 
> = =. | I+ | 


66 МО)О 


In full bloom: Paul Weller, 
Black Barn Studios, 
Ripley, Surrey, Monday, 
February 15, 2021. 





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MOJO’s June 2021 guest 
editor and his predecessors 
(from left) David Bowie, 
Tom Waits, Noel Gallagher 
and Keith Richards. 


“MUSIC'S FOREVER GIVING 
IP CUTS THROUGH = 


_ 8 


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“ MINOT WATER 
METTRE 
wot UAT 

ити TOSH 


Nicole Nodland, Kevin Cummins/Getty, Getty. 


< “Gonna be brilliant to play 


99 


| MARY. MA КА ТИНИ | 
| К e 


live,” remarks Weller, ruefully, 
looking up at the sky as if check- 
ing for clearance to take off. It's not forthcoming. At writing 
it's unclear when live performances will be possible in 2021. 

So, occupying the pre-release time that would normally be filled 
with rehearsing, Paul Weller has found a new gig. He's MOJO's 
Guest Editor this month. 

“It’s a great honour," he declares. “Гуе been getting MOJO 
since it started. I remember reading the first issue on the tour bus 
back in 1994 and thinking, Finally. There haven't been many guest 
editors, have there?" 

David Bowie, Тот Waits, Noel Gallagher and Keith Richards. 

“Yeah, a great honour.” 

You join him, socially distanced but very much in-the-flesh, on a 
bench nestled by the jukebox in the control-room of Black Barn 
Studios, the memorabilia-festooned recording hub that Weller has 
owned in the dinky Surrey village of Ripley since 1999. It is the 
umpteenth of February, during the longest post-war winter on 
record. Despite his enthusiasm for this part-time role editing 
MOJO, it’s unlikely that Weller will be swapping Black Barn for a 
career hot-desking at a start-up publisher in East London. He’s 
enjoyed the task. But never again. 

^I wouldn't want to be the Editor every month because it's 
_ probably a thankless job,” he agrees, with a pitying snort. “Гуе had a 
chance to put everything I like in. It’s been good to do, but I’m at the 
other end of the process. I make the music, you lot write about it.” 

He wonders if he has the temperament to be an editor anyway, 
greasing the wheels that must be greased. Surely running an 
operation like Paul Weller’s isn’t that different, though. What kind 
of boss is he? 

“Not for me to say,” he replies, modestly. Weller cocks his head 
towards studio engineer Charles Rees, who’s making himself look 
busy at the mixing desk. 

“Charles?” 


68 MOJO 


ALL RIGHT 


ae 


МАЈИ] 





Гат Mo 

*Yes, mein Führer?" responds Rees, instantly, clicking his heels. 

A smile dances momentarily across Weller’s lips. *Firm but fair, 
let's say." 

HAT KIND OF BOSS WELLER MIGHT BE IS PERHAPS 
[| answered by describing the kind of man he is. Annoyingly, 
he is complex. 

Spend any time with Paul Weller and you soon forget you are 
spending time with Paul Weller, a poster of whom — executing a leap 
while swinging a Rickenbacker — you may have had stuck to your 
childhood bedroom wall. Instead, you could be catching up with a 
rarely-glimpsed old school pal. He wants to know how the family 
are doing. He's got a vaguely dirty anecdote to share. He needs to 
learn about any new music you've heard recently. When he texts to 
clarify something, he does so employing the idiosyncratic grammar 
of an elderly relative new to iPhones. You soon feel very comforta- 
ble in his presence. Unusually in the orbit of an internationally 
renowned rock star, everyone is on equal footing. He brews 
his round of tea. 

What sets him apart, of course, is his once-in-a-generation way 
with a song that summarises a moment in time or emotion, allied to 
an impressive work ethic. Check his track record: 22 UK Top 10 
albums; seven of them Number 1s. “I’m just trying to match what's 
gone before," he says, considering his high levels of productivity, “аз 
every time we lift the bar a little higher." 

He's driven, which is the biggest clue to what kind of boss or 
editor he might be. The source of that drive is clear. 

Weller was 53 when he released a song called That Dangerous 
Age, but he could have been 31, or 17, or 44, because every age is 
dangerous for Paul Weller. *We don't know, we can't always see, but 
old Father Tyme, ah you know he don't care,” he sang with rich 
regret on On Sunset's Old Father Tyme. “Whatever he gives you has 































































Weller on-stage, 
Edinburgh Castle, 
Scotland, July 11, 
2019; (below) tour bus 
reading matter, 1994; 
(inset bottom) Paul's 
top 45s, handwritten. 





—— 


a price to bear." He is chased by time at every turn. This is the man, 
after all, who split The Jam at 24 because he didn't want to be 
trapped in a marriage too young. 

Today, he is 62 years old, 63 in May. He looks in fine fettle: lean 
as a whippet with long white locks, a red Harrington jacket over a 
navy polo shirt — one of his own designs for a range with Sunspel — 
smart checked strides paired with loafers. Looks, however, can be 
deceiving. The lockdown has impacted him deeply. 

“If we don't gig until 2022, I'll be 64 that year," he says 
forlornly. *That's a funny old age to go back on the road." 

His life has been full and enjoyable, but the problem for Weller 
has always been that it will end. *I feel the weight of mortality. I was 
talking to my mate the other day who's my age. And he said, ‘You 
realise that one of us will probably be dead in the next 10 years?’ We 
both laughed, because we were joking, but... that's the reality. It's 
gone so quickly. Too quickly." 

Hence 16 solo albums in 19 years; five in the last six. Weller 
needs to work to keep the black dog locked out. 5o when his 
band started receiving demos on their phones in the middle of the 
night last spring, soon after completing On Sunset, they were not 
surprised in the slightest. 

“Не was the first person I thought of when lockdown was 
announced," says his long-time guitar foil Steve Cradock. 
**What the fuck is Paul going to do?!’ Write songs, obviously. 

He climbs the walls anyway. He's been on the road since 
the 1970s.” 

The songs soon revealed their shape as a body of work to 
Weller. The playful expansiveness of On Sunset had been stream- 
lined. There would be little call for the unplugged acoustics of 2 
Irue Meanings. He was wiping the slate clean. 

“I wanted to make an album where every song could 


be released as a single," he says, before remembering sadly 
that this is the modern world. *If that sort of thing still 
existed. They call them ‘impact tracks’ now.” He pauses, as 
if swilling sour milk. “I had thought about releasing > 


The 10 tasty 45s 
currently stacked 
in Paul Weller’s 
inner jukebox. Notes 
by 


Search For 
The Inner Self 
(Ampex, 1971) 


A permanent entry 
in Weller’s Тор 10, 
his signed original 
МӘ | 7-inch of this rare, 
deep soul groove is 
among his proudest 
possessions. No offers, though: 
Weller won't sell. 





Leave Fast 
(Polydor, 2018) 


Spiritual relative of 
The Jam’s That’s 
Entertainment 
describes a young 
man’s fear of being 

| | stuckina small town 
amid “broken fridges and torn-up 
sofas” beyond his leave-by date. 


LAM иып 


Aa-—P 





| 
| 
| 
ВАТЕ PART 


This Is America 
(ВСА, 2018) 


1 Actor Donald 
Glover's powerful 
SE rap-gospel 
statement about 
=] American gun 

| violence and 
institutional racism provides 
philosophical inspiration for 
Weller's That Pleasure on Fat Pop 
(Volume 1). 





Dreaming Of You 
(Deltasonic, 2002) 


ура One of James 
Skelly’s earliest 

¥ compositions for 
the Wirral-ites 

Ж | details teenage 

fe aA + "| longing asa glorious 
sing-along soul-shanty. Showcase 
for the nascent skills of guitarist 

Bill Ryder-Jones. 







Tae io. 


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г/ "Lene Fait’. Som л, (pare F 
У Tis i Ponga childish Combing. 
4/ in My lovely Roam — The Ceval ( 
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Я "Bas Shop" Fatback Bnd (реа = 


) 





Home Is Where 

The Hatred Is 

(Kudu, 1972) 

Phillips’ tender 

| cover of Gil 

| Scott-Heron’s 
original from the 

| same year squeezes 

| even more 

confessional сои! гот a tale of 

ajunkie’s quest for peace: both 
had skin іп that game. 

















(Are You Ready) 

Do the Bus Stop 

(Polydor, 1975) 

EN c. Releasedinthe 

| teeth of the New 

| York disco storm, 

| the deep funk 
call-and-response of 
= Bus Stop wasa 
massive hit on dancefloors, but 
failed to дат the chart traction it 
was ultimately designed for. 














| ү М. 


Heart Shaped Stone 
(One Little Indian, 2013) 

| A lush, string- 

| drenched tale about 
| searching for love 
and the subsequent 
` ebb-and-flow of a 
____='!_ | relationship from 
the honey-voiced English 
singer-songwriter, a big Weller 
favourite. 





God Made Me Funky 
(Arista, 1975) 
| | | | The jazz-funk 
| sextet’s Survival Of 
The Fittest LP was the 
first without Herbie 
Hancockon 

Р keyboards, butit did 
produce this magnificent nine- 
minute funkathon with The Pointer 
Sisters boosting the choir. 









Search For 
The New Land 
(Blue Note, 1966) 


| Hard bop thrills from 
trumpeter Morgan 
plus Herbie 
Hancock, Wayne 
Shorter and more 
— \ | on this pairing of 
The Joker and Mr Kenyatta (drawn 
from the contemporaneous 
Search... album) on an unusual 
33'/згрт 7-inch. 


























Cellophane Car 

{Tough Love, 2019) 

ЕЗ] An infectious 
reading ofthe 
one-fingered 
keyboard text (à la 
The Velvet 
Underground) by 
these key players on Melbourne's 
alternative scene. Hear it on our 
Weller-curated CD! 





"It's peaceful. Space to 
think”: Weller takes five, 
Black Barn, February 
2021; (opposite from 
top) Paul with father 
John Weller, December 5, 
1982; outside the studio. 


а 
= =. 


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“WHO DOESNT 
WONDER IF THEY'RE 
А GOOD FATHER, 


A (009. PERSON? 


- each one as а single first, but was quickly talked out of that.” 

Flick open the Fat Pop (Volume 1) box — "I'm keeping my options 
open for a second volume" — and pick out a confection at random: 
each has its own distinct flavour. Testify, a call and response shared 
with Amen Corner legend Andy Fairweather Low that reverberates 
soulfully. Cosmic Fringes, the keyboard-driven opener that deto- 
nates a social-media “keyboard-warrior”, channels a new wave 
mood to its modern conclusion. On the Jam-like True, Weller 
shares a delicious vocal with young Liverpudlian Lia Metcalfe of The 
Mysterines. That Pleasure, a '60s-soul-like song inspired by the 
Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, struts across the piece, 
graciously indignant. At each turn, Weller is constructing a 12-song 
monument to the pop music that has shaped his adult life. 

Nowhere is that more clear than on the title track. A deep groove 
— informed, he says, by DJ Muggs’s Cypress Hill beats — it's Weller's 
love letter to music's life-saving qualities. ^Who brings the light 
when the world's so dark," he solemnly demands, “who’s always 
there when your life is down? Fat Pop!" 

“Music has been my most reliable friend — and I am blessed with 
many great friends,” he expands. “Music’s a spiritual force, it covers 
so much ground: as a way of informing us, making us question 
things. It's been my whole life. Everything has been governed by it." 

As if to prove his point, he offers to play a new song he has 
recorded. “It’s a lockdown tune I did with Erland Cooper. He 
wrote the words, I sang 'em." 

Another new song? What will he do with it? 

Weller's manager, Claire Moon, stops in her tracks as she passes 
through the control room. *Please don't say it's for another album. 
We can't release three albums in three years!" She's joking, but 
she looks exhausted. 

Weller chuckles. “The songs come when they come,” he 
replies. “You can’t turn them down, you never know when they 


(2), Photo by Virginia Turbett/Redferns/Getty 


might run out." 
Charles Rees cues up the song in question — Burnout. This, it 
transpires, is a misty blues, with melancholic echoes of Robert Wyatt. 


Nicole Nodland 


70 MOJO 





And that guitar hook, that's familiar. Sounds a bit like Breathe. 

Weller looks quizzical. “Like what?” 

Breathe? By Pink Floyd? 

“Puck off does it!” he says, genuinely offended. “Never heard it. 
Pink fucking Floyd!” 

We sit in silence for a moment, to allow the comparison to make 
its chastened way out of the studio. Weller lights a cigarette. “I’ve 
got to keep at the recording,” he says, quietly, almost to himself. 
“Keeps me off the streets.” 


he lives in a cottage at the end of the garden. The band stay in 
the adjoining cottage, like The Monkees. 
“It’s handy when we're down here recording, it means there's 


W HEN PAUL WELLER IS RECORDING AT BLACK BARN, 


no time limit. It’s peaceful. Space to think. But I could never be in 
Ripley all the time. I'd go mad.” He loves living in central London, 
with his wife and their three children. Close to the action. He's a 
Mod after all. *You feel the place is alive even locked-down." 

We walk across the overturned wooden crates laid on the sodden 
lawn outside the studio and up the small hill to have a look at his 
dwellings. He reckons there are some nice colours in there. Nicole 
the photographer agrees and asks him to lie on his back on the red 
rug in the cottage's hall, as she straddles him. “At my age and all!” 
he quips, like Sid James in a Carry On film. 

One of the many enviable posters and lithographs in the cottage 
is a screenprint of Francoise Hardy that inspired the artwork for Fat 
Pop (Volume 1). Also here is the piano he wrote Shades Of Blue on, 
one night last year with his eldest daughter, 29-year-old Leah. He 
had the verse, but the chorus eluded him. Then Leah started to sing, 
“You spend all your life just to find all that matters is close to you...” 

He loves it. The theme ties in with a recurring search for spirit- 
ual well-being that runs through the long-player. *There are a few 
songs about mental illness," he says. *Not mine necessarily, but I see 
it in others." 

Has he suffered from depression? 


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“Yeah, I have done in my time. Definitely.” 

And now? 

“Well,” he begins. “Many things have changed. I’m happier in 
myself. Age and sobriety are the major factors." He apologises for 
mentioning his sobriety. He hasn't had a drink in over a decade, but 
he's wary of preaching. *It's major for me. I'm not in that sodden, 
blurry world any more. I’m more appreciative. It's important to be 
humble, to say thank you to the power of prayer. Not to a Christian 
God, necessarily, but to the universe. То recognise your place in it all." 

He nods. “I find that helps.” 

Growing up, he says, nobody talked about their feelings in his 
home. Feeling down? Having a bad day? **Oh well, have a drink, get 
on with it.' Sometimes you need that. But I've had to learn other ways 
to deal with being down. Training is good, staying fit. Eating well." 

Weller's latter-day demons are addressed by two standout 
songs on the album, the quietly furious Failed and the stately Glad 
Times, co-written by Anth Brown and MOJO writer Tom Doyle. 
They both deal with some of the frustrations presented by co- 
habitation and parenting. 

Failed was written in the moments "after a huge row with the 
missus. Some songs you just have to get out there and say it. They fly 
out." In it, he faces up to his limitations. ^Who doesn't wonder if 
they're a good father, a good partner? A good person. People may 
think it's strange hearing me sing ‘I’ve failed,’ but we all measure 
success differently." 

The nitty gritty of a long-term relationship, the absence that can 
be felt in marriage, is also considered in Glad Times. He's been wed 
to his second wife, Hannah, since 2010. "It's about that thing that 
happens to a lot of couples, especially with kids, you just miss each 
other. Everyone's walking around the kitchen, doing different 
things and you... don't notice each other." 

In that moment, Weller is beset by insecurity. 

“You wonder, Аге you still in love? Is it still working?’ Because 
everything is so practical you need to work hard to see what you 
loved about that person.” 


It’s areason why he likes to work at Black Barn. “You feel the tug 
of their absence again.” 
Outside, the sky is a deep blue, the first clear day in weeks, with- 


out an overnight frost. We step into it and let the sun wash our faces. 


through his iTunes, enthusing about new music. “Do you know 
Testify by Davie? That’s a tune. Cosmorama by Beautify Junk- 
yards. They're Portuguese, psychedelic. Good gear. I’m digging 
Vegyn, too, trying to get him to do a remix. I got the Pet Shop Boys 


to do a remix for this record. Proper banger.” 


В... IN THE STUDIO, PAUL WELLER IS FLICKING 


Friends recommend new music all the time to Weller. Under 
normal circumstances he heads to his local record shop to fill his 
boots, but even in lockdown he’s not tempted by Spotify. 

“I am not for Spotify whatsoever,” he says firmly. “It’s great for 
punters. You pay your nine quid every month and listen to whatever 
you want. But for the artist it is shit. It’s disgraceful.” 

He offers an example. “I had three million Spotity plays for On 
When 
Paul Weller is furious, his voice becomes quietly measured. “АП 
right, it's nine grand, but it's not £3 million is it? Whichever fucker 
thought music should be free was a marketing whizz because that 
genie will not go back in the bottle." 

He lights a cigarette. It's the final chink in his armour. *Forty- 
five years of smoking. That will be my downfall,” he says, exhaling. 


Sunset. For that I made nine and a half grand in revenue." 


“But, you know, c'est la vie.” 

Shortly before his father John died after a long illness in 2009, 
Weller asked him if he regretted cigarettes. ^He said, *No, I had 40 
beautiful years smoking.’ Fair enough. My main thing is how much 
longer I have with my kids." 

There are eight Weller children: the eldest, Nathaniel, is 32, the 
youngest, his daughter Nova, is four this year. “When I’m with Nova 
I have no worries. She's so special. Some people ask if I should've 
had her at such a late age, but if I hadn't then I wouldn't have met 
her. Long after I'm gone they'll be carrying on. So will their kids. 
It's important to see that continuum." 

This, he says, is his key belief. The meaning to his life. There is a 
lot of love inside of him. *I think it grows, too. All you need really is 
love, John was right. Whether it's love for what you're doing, love 
for your fellow human. Through love comes positivity. You look 
forward to things when you're in love." 

What Weller has to look forward to more specifically is sitting on 
a sofa in Claire Moon's office and making plans for tours that may 
or may not happen. He knows he'll have to have a Coronavirus vac- 
cine to enable them, but is not overjoyed about that. 

“The thought of putting heavy metals, mercury in my body, no. 
But I don’t want to be an anti-vax person, either. I had all the 
vaccines as a child. And if I have to take it to tour abroad I will, even 
though Brexit is a fucking nightmare for playing Europe.” 

We leave Paul Weller in the Black Barn office, surrounded by the 
framed discs of his fabled career, head cocked to one side, holding 
his chin as he weighs up his vaccinated future, caught up in the 
whirlwind of his ever-changing moods. He knows it’ll be all right. 
He got this far without any serious hitches. 


from Paul Weller. He wants to make sure we've understood the 
idea behind his album's title track, Fat Pop. The message reads: 
‘As I was ruminating earlier can I add that my gratitude to music is 
boundless. I'd still be scratching about in my old town if it wasn't for 


\ IX DAYS LATER, AT 22:58 ON SUNDAY, A TEXT ARRIVES 


music! I possibly would never have travelled, met so many great people 


from all over the world, seen beyond the confines of the UK & how much 


we have in common. When soul heads say ‘keep the faith’, that's exactly 
what it is: a faith. Pure & simple. Music's forever giving, it's a living thing, 
it's not started wars (fights, yeh), it cuts through all cultures, it's informa- 
tion, education, entertainment. And generally it tells the truth! That's 
Il... just had to say that! X” 
The heart has many desires, but for Paul Weller there is just one 
constant, uncomplicated, life-long love. That's just how he is and 


why he needs you so. Mj 


MOJO 71 


The seeker: Paul 
McCartney puts his 
brave face on the 
future, Scotland, 1971. 











ARCH 1971 AND PAUL McCARTNEY WAS IN LOS ANGELES, TRYING 
to Пе low. While the local press speculated whether he was in town to shoot 
a US TV special with a new band, or if he'd indeed already left LA and flown 
to Hawaii, McCartney bunkered in Sound Recorders on Yucca Street in 
Hollywood, in the shadow of the ringed storeys of the Capitol Records 
building, putting the final touches to his second post-Beatles album, Ram. 





He only broke cover once, at the Grammys on March 16, rolling up to 
the podium, hand-in-hand with Linda, to accept an award for Let It Be from movie legend John 
Wayne. Outside, when leaving, a reporter caught up with Paul for a quote. “Т have a knife and fork 
and I’m here to cut a record,” he quipped before speeding off in a Cadillac to the sound of fans 
screaming on the sidewalk. 

It wasn't long before Beatles devotees tracked McCartney down to Sound Recorders. Some left 
gifts for him, others had to be gently escorted away by members of the LAPD. One day in the studio, 
Paul stuck on a pair of shades and announced to startled engineer Eirik Wangberg that he was pop- 
ping out for a stroll along Hollywood Boulevard. Not long after, the still-newly-ex-Beatle returned, 
bursting into mock tears before grinning: *No one recognised me!" 

What else was he doing in LA? Perhaps, partly, living out fantasies harboured during The Beatles' mid- 
'60s game of creative one-upmanship with The Beach Boys. The McCartneys were staying in a beachside 
Santa Monica house rented from the Getty family, and together with Linda at the microphone in the 
studio, Paul was layering distinctly Pet Sounds-like harmonies on some of the new tracks, purposely 
echoing the 1966 album he would later assess as “the classic of the century... unbeatable in many ways." 

In marked contrast to his self-recorded McCartney solo debut, Ram was to be a far lusher and more 
hi-fi affair. “Well, Hollywood is Hollywood," Eirik Wangberg — dubbed ‘The Norwegian’ by 
McCartney — tells MOJO today. *This is where Paul wanted to come, and Ram is the 
sound he naturally got there." 

And Wangberg should know — the London-born, Oslo-raised engineer had already „ 
scored credits for The Beach Boys (Smiley Smile and Wild Honey), Buffalo Springfield = Б 
and The Mamas & The Papas. “The album sounds more intricate, deep and wide than > 
the home-made McCartney,” adds Wangberg. Moreover, it was McCartney’s first З 
concerted effort to distance himself musically from The Beatles. 

"Absolutely," Macca told your writer decades later. *Definitely trying to do some- 
thing else. То have to invent something new was difficult, y'know. But I just felt like 
that was the way to go. I just wrote in a different direction and tried to avoid any 
Beatles clichés. 

“Зо, the songs became, I dunno, a little more episodic or something like that," 
he added. *I took on that kind of idea a bit more than I would've with The Beatles. 
I suppose I was just letting myself be free." 


© Paul T Photographer: Linda 


у. 





MOJO 73 





| Don’t let me down: (from left) 
Linda and Paul McCartney 
receive Grammys from John 
Wayne, March 16, 1971; the 
McCartneys, Royal Courts of 
Justice, February 19, 1971; Allen 
Klein (on left) leaves same court. 


< Moreover, the sunshine vibes helped to coun- 
teract the hangover from The Beatles’ court battle. 
While that had concluded only days before — 


on March 12 in London — and with a ruling in 





McCartney’s favour, dark clouds lingered. 

“I could tell that Paul was under stress,” says Wangberg, “even 
though he acted very professional, calm and focused in the studio. 
Y’know, he did not know how and where his career would go after 
The Beatles. This was a chancy period for him. 

“Paul wouldn’t talk about his troubles, though. We were in the 
studio to make a great record. Linda didn’t even want Paul and I 
talking about The Beatles: ‘Stop it, we want to look forward!” 

Indeed, even the title of Ram, which had come to McCartney 
some months earlier when driving through rural Scotland, denoted 
propulsive force and onward motion. “It meant, 


” he explained, 


“ram forward, press on, be positive." 


and the kids (Heather, seven; Mary, one) boarded the 
55 France in Southampton, bound for New York. The Bea- 


tles had never recorded in American studios and it was clearly a time 





F IVE MONTHS EARLIER, OCTOBER 1970, PAUL, LINDA 


for new horizons and experiences. 
a studio guitarist on the New York R&B 
scene, bagging most of his session gigs through a booking outfit 


David Spinozza was 


called the Radio Registry. One day he received a call from someone 
he took to be a new girl at the agency. *She called my house and she 
said, ‘Oh, this is Linda," Spinozza remembers today. “Му husband 
would love to get together with you and play.’ I remember saying, 
"Well, who's your husband?’ I really didn't know who it was (laughs). 
She might have said, ‘McCartney’, but for some reason I just didn’t 
put it together with Paul McCartney in my head." 

Spinozza was duly invited to a rundown loft rehearsal space on 
W. 45th Street. It was a 
Beatle, and an indication that McCartney was keeping things low- 


surprisingly grimy setting for a former 
key. "As you know, they were still very famous,” says Spinozza. “I 
don't think they could just walk down the street that easy without 
being accosted by fans." 

Expecting a jam session, Spinozza was quietly annoyed to find 
himself in a waiting room alongside other session guitarists. He 
realised it was in fact an audition. When he was summoned upstairs 
into the practice space, he was tasked with strumming the rela- 
tively simple acoustic chords for what Spinozza later realised was 
Another Day, the single that would precede the album. 

Subsequently, he'd hear on the sessioneer grapevine that other 
New York musicians had been similarly affronted by having to try 
out for McCartney. “Some of the studio drummers were really 
belligerent,” he laughs. “Like, they'd say to Paul, ‘Well I heard you 
play a little drums. Why don't you play some drums?" 

A more amenable drummer was found when Denny Seiwell 
“burned- 


out building” in another, sketchier location on W. 43rd. He tenta- 


turned up, slightly alarmed, at what he remembers as a 


tively walked down the stairs into the basement to find Paul and 
Linda and a bashed-up set of rented drums. “They said, ‘Do you 
mind playing for us?’” Seiwell recalls. “And I just went right into 
Ringo on the tom toms.” 

The preliminary sessions for Ram were conducted on the other 
side of Midtown, in the more salubrious surrounds of Columbia’s 


74 MOJO 


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Studio B, where a daily routine quickly developed. Paul 
and Linda, always with the kids, would arrive and install 
a playpen for Mary in the control room. 
“I wasn't used to children being in the studio,” 
Spinozza admits. “So, that was at first a little distracting to me. The 
children were there the whole time, and Linda was basically attend- 
ing to them and Paul was showing us the music. It wasn't like we 
hung out or smoked pot together." 

Day one, McCartney, Spinozza and Seiwell cut Another Day, the 
daydreamy tale of an office-working girl — Eleanor Rigby transported 
to Manhattan, reckoned the drummer. As the weeks of nine-to-five 
sessions progressed, Paul would play through a song each day for the 
others and they'd work for hours to achieve a band feel before 
pressing the record button. 

"Immediately what dawned on me was how good the songwriting 
was,” says Spinozza. “I couldn't believe how well Paul could sing the 
melodies to these songs, and sometimes even change the melody. 
He would just sing it different each time.” 

“Га never seen that kind of talent before,” agrees Seiwell. 

But while Ram was to be the sole album jointly credited to Paul 
and Linda McCartney, the musicians admit that the latter's musical 
input was not so obvious at this stage. 

“She never really played,” says Spinozza. “I didn’t ever hear her 
play anything or even sing anything. We just basically cut the tracks 
with Paul singing a dummy vocal.” 

Denny Seiwell’s take is that Linda’s contribution was far more 
significant: “She was the one that got Paul off of his ass when he was 
having to sue the other Beatles. His heart was broken. He would’ve 
sat up there in Scotland and just become a drunk. She said, ‘Come 
on, you’re a songwriter. Let’s go to New York and make a record.’ If 
she hadn’t got on his case, Ram never would’ve been made.” 

“Linda was great,” McCartney would confirm. “She just eased 
me out of it and just sort of said, ‘Hey, y'know, you don’t want to get 
too crazy.’ And made me feel a lot better. And then I moved again 
into music therapy, which was Ram.” 

As the songs flowed, it was clear to the participants that Ram was 
shaping up to be far more ambitious than McCartney. Spinozza was 
taken aback by run-throughs of the multi-movement Uncle Albert/ 
Admiral Halsey: “I remember thinking, ‘Wow, this is an incredible 
piece of music, with all the tempo changes.” Significantly, McCart- 
ney was now freed from argumentative bandmates and fully in charge 
as he marshalled his hired hands — with the late Hugh McCracken in 
place of Spinozza, who had moved on to other bookings. 

“So, if I wanted to do Monkberry Moon Delight with ‘a piano up 
my nose’, then I figured, *That'll be OK,” McCartney reasoned. 
“Now I can do that kind of thing. To give everyone their credit, I 
think everyone felt that way, y’ know. George felt that way about АЙ 
Things Must Pass. I’m sure John did.” 

In spite of his desire to turn a fresh page, a Beatle-y imprint can be 
heard on Ram, as well as a playful experimentation. On Oh Woman, 
Oh Why, a rocker with a murder theme destined for the B-side of 
Another Day, McCartney even used a revolver to overdub gunshots. 

At Phil Ramone’s A&R Recording, working from arrangements 
scored in London by George Martin, McCartney conducted the New 
York Philharmonic on Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey, the similarly © 
episodic Long Haired Lady and gold-standard McCartney ballad the 
Back Seat Of My Car. Martin had urged Paul to chart the tracks > 


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Piece of cake: 
McCartney lets it rip, 
Columbia Studio B, 
New York, 1970. 





WHENDID Paul McCartney come 
into my life? It would have been 
November 1963 - the Royal 
Command performance. My mum 
had boughtthe singles - definitely 
SheLoves You - butthat was the 
first time I saw them on the box. And 
that was it for me. Even at the age of 
five | thought, “This is amazing,” 
and it’s never changed for me, it's 
never ever faltered. 

The Beatles taught me 
everything: musically, but also 
about the power of imagination. 
Look outside your little village or 
city walls, to see that there’s 
something outside, beyond. And 
question everything: you don’t 
have to just accept what you're 
supposed to accept. They were 
everything and they kind of still are. 
Bono said they were the Big 
Bang and | think that’s 
true. Forget about 
Elvis. The Beatles 
wrote theirown 
songs, they were 
self-contained, 
they led the way. 

Even the 
other day, 
someone was 
playing Tomorrow 
Never Knows іп the 
studio on the big 
speakers. God knows 
how many times I’ve heard it 
but! was instantly, “Fuuucking 
hell! Does it get any better than 
this tune?” And this was not even 
four years after Please Please Me. 
The giant steps, the incredible 
innovations in such a short space 
of time... 

When did I start being ‘Paul’? 
That was my тит. I was christened 
John but my mum changed her 
mind two weeks later and started 
calling me Paul, and | was awful glad 
shedid. The Macca connection was 
alwaysimportantto me. Thefact 
he’s a Gemini, like me,Itookasa 
sign. And he had a chipped tooth, 
like me [Macca chipped his in a 
moped crash on the Wirral, Boxing 
Day, 1965]. And I thought, That's 
another sign. Iwas always looking 
for comparisons. When | started 
playing, І was playing guitar, but 
then! wanted to play bass to be like 


76 MOJO 


-=| 


р. M" А 
—— Still smokin’: Pauls 
Weller and McCartney 
‹ pruna ad 
_ Come together at 
_ Abbey Road Studios, 
September 4, 1995. 
> 1 





Macca, but! found! couldn't sing 
and play bass at the same time, so 
I changed back. 

Favourite Macca bits? Well one 
of my favourite bass lines is actually 
Tomorrow Never Knows - based 
mostly on that one note, like a 
precursor to trance music, a riff that 
goes roundand roundlike a mantra 
-fucking ingenious. And a song? For 
No One - how amazing is that, both 
melodically and lyrically? 

The first Масса solo album, 
McCartney, | love that: the lo-fi vibe 
and Macca’s funky drumming. But 
Ramis fantastic album too. There 
аге so many good tunes on it - Dear 
Boy is one of his best ever, kind of a 
Martha My Dear vibe. And there’s an 
edginess inthe music and the 
production before the sophistica- 
tion of Wings comes т. | like my 
Maccaraw. 

When he did Come Together 
with us [ie. The Smokin' MojoFilters, 
on TheHelp Album, 1995] we were 





shitting ourselves, so we recorded 
the backing track ahead of time: 
"Let'sgetthis down atleast." But 
when Macca came in he was great. 
He played some guitar onit, and 
Wurlitzer, and he did some BVs with 
us. | was nervous, you know, to ask 
him to do another take - like, with 
a bit more bass on the guitar - but 
he was cool about that too. 

| played with him at the Royal 
Albert Hallin 2012, ata Teenage 
Cancer Trust gig. We were 
backstage and he was saying to 
Ronnie Wood, "You should come on 
and play guitar on Get Back," апа! 
was behind Woody, going, "And, er, 
maybe me?" "Oh all right, and you as 
well." And I was like, "Yes!" | don't 
think you could hear my guitar but 
| was on-stage with Масса and that 
was good enough for me. 

Astold to Danny Eccleston 


Studio animal: (clockwise from above) Масса 


and Eirik ‘The Norwegian’ Wangberg, Sound 
Recorders, LA, 1971; shooting Oh Woman, Oh Why 
at A&R, NYC, 1970; with Linda at A&R; with Denny 
Seiwell (centre) and Hugh McCracken, Columbia 
Studio, 1970; the lightning conductor at A&R. 





= for orchestra himself, but the singer insisted, “Why should 
I when I have you?" 

David Spinozza would go on to play with John Lennon on 1973's 
Mind Games and so finds himself in the unusual position of having 
worked on solo albums with both Lennon and McCartney. *They 
were both very biz-like," he says. “Paul took a little more time with 
the production. John liked to work fast. Paul was into a lot of the 
detail. He was always looking for a special, special sound." 


N FEBRUARY 19, 1971, WHEN ANOTHER DAY 


was released in the UK as a taster single from the New 





York sessions, McCartney was in London, sporting 
the dark grey Tommy Nutter suit he'd worn on the cover of 
Abbey Road, attending the opening hearing of The Beatles & 
Company partnership case at the High Court. As he later told 
me, all he could really think was, “Jesus, am I really going 
through this?" 

Itwas the only date on which he would appear. None of the 
other Beatles showed for the near-month-long proceedings, 
preferring to have their statements read out in court. But 
McCartney was determined to block Allen Klein — represent- 
ing the other three — from seizing full control of the band's affairs: 
“Т was the lone voice, y'know. бо, it was really painful because I 
knew I had to stand up. Apple would've by now been called ABKCO 
[Klein's company]. I realised that everyone didn't get it, but they 
sort of felt secure in the middle of this thunderstorm." 

His mess of bitter and confused emotions spilled over into one 
song in particular on Ram. Gently driving groover Too Many People 
laid into what he perceived as the *preaching practices" of John and 
Yoko and even opened with the words “piss off”. 

“Well, it doesn't actually say, ‘piss off," McCartney argued. 
““Piece of cake’ it says, which was thinly disguised as ‘piss off, cake." 
And hey, come on, how mild is that? It’s not exactly a tirade, is it? 
“Too many people preaching practices’... I felt that was true of what 
was going on. ‘Do this, do that.’ 

“At the time, I wouldn’t have minded if the preaching of the 
practices were wise. ‘Do this, do that, and y'know, you'll make good 
music and Allen Klein won't steal your company.’ Io me, the fool- 


O Paul McCartney/ Photographer: Linda McCartney (5), Getty 





“IF LINDA HADN’T GOT ON HIS CASE, 
RAM NEVER WOULD’VE BEEN 
MADE.” 


ishness that was going on was not some- 
thing to be followed, y'know?" 

Later, the public and even the other 
Beatles would hear digs in other Ram 





tracks, including 3 Legs. To be fair, it 
was сазу to interpret the lines “Му dog he got three 
legs/But he can't run" and *I thought you was my 
friend/But you let me down" as pops at his ex-band- 
mates. McCartney insisted, however, that 3 Legs was 
“just kind of a joke blues song in my mind. Everything 
was being interpreted." 
Others speculated that Dear Boy was directed at Len- 
non, when in fact McCartney had had Linda's first hus- 
band ‚ Joseph Melville See Jr, in mind, as he reflected on a rival 
who didn't “know how much you missed". But one other track 
did feature a deliberate Beatles reference, when McCartney's fleeting 
Silver Beetles stage name Paul Ramon — also his pseudonym when he 
guested on Steve Miller's My Dark Hour in '69 — was twisted into 
Ram On. Here he really did sound like he was imparting advice to his 
younger self: *Give your heart to somebody soon/Right away." 
Although still only 28 when he wrote the songs on Ram, 
McCartney clearly had a lot of emotions to work through. “Like 


I say, that was my saviour,” he would tell me. “Just making tracks." 


B 


ACK IN CALIFORNIA AT SOUND RECORDERS IN 
spring 1971, McCartney belied his controlling reputation by 
giving Eirik *The Norwegian' Wangberg a surprising amount 
of latitude in the final shaping of Ram. On Long Haired Lady, Wang- 
berg boldly stripped away extended passages of George Martin's 
orchestration. “I thought it was a bit tedious during a long run,” he 
says today. “So I built the music from the ground up again, bit by 
bit, as the final section repeated. I turned towards Paul and saw 
tears running down his cheeks. Then I knew the mix was a winner." 

Wangberg also removed the orchestra from the raucous, Beatle-y 
coda of The Back Seat Of My Car, then got in touch with Universal 
Pictures to request sound effects tapes of thunderstorms, which he 
added to Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey. 

In return, McCartney unveiled for Wangberg some of the free- 


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"UNE to we р, 
чу 


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"Oa. 


whe -eling produc tion techniques The Beatles had pioneered. 
On slightly daft bluesy rocker Smile Away, McCartney broke 

all the rules, asking the engineer to fuzz up his bass be- 
fore adding overdub upon overdub. “This showed me 
how The Beatles had been thinking untraditionally 






when recording their music,” Wangberg says. 
In years to come, both Michael Jackson and 
Elton John would compliment Paul and Linda 
McCartney on the unique character of their 
vocal harmonies. From behind the desk at the 
time, as their tracks went down to tape, Wang- 
berg was equally impressed, particularly with the 
elaborate interweaving on Dear Boy. “1 had worked 

with The Beach Boys on [Smiley Smile’ s| Vegetables,” 
he reminds MOJO, “but Dear Boy took the cake.” 
In a last remarkable act of trust, McCartney allowed Wangberg 
to make the final song selection and sequence the running order. 
Then, before the first full playback, McCartney insisted they all 
toast the completed album with 12-year-old Johnnie Walker. As 
The Back Seat Of My Car faded to a close, the McCartneys hugged 
one another, before adding Wangberg to the clinch and weeping 
with joy and relief. The latter now views Ram as “Paul’s family 
album. He needed this closeness after The Beatles.” 

As slick as it was, Ram was also deeply quirky, with its in-jokey lyr- 
ics and stylistic about-turns. Underlining the point, the McCartneys 
pressed up 500 copies of a one-sided vinyl radio promo titled Brung 
To Ewe By, intended as 15 intro jingles for DJs to use when playing 
Ram songs, with sheep noises, nonsense spoken word and a repeated 
piano ditty not on the album, Now Hear This Song Of Mine. 

The cover artwork for the LP was similarly eccentric, with Macca’s 
childlike felt-tip scribbles framing a shot of him wrestling with a 
ram on the McCartneys’ High Park Farm in Scotland, alongside the 
cryptic message L.I.L.Y. (later revealed to be Linda, I Love You). 

But it was a nature shot, featured twice on the back of the sleeve, 
of two beetles copulating, that raised eyebrows. It was a coded 
message that seemed to say: fucking Beatles. McCartney later 
assured me that it hadn’t been intentional. 

“No, I swear to God,” he laughed. “Things like that seem so > 


MOJO 77 






THROUGHOUT 1976-77 aseries of 
personal ads began sporadically 
appearing т the pages of The Times 
andthe Evening Standard 
announcing, society notice-style, 
the movements of one Percy 
Thrillington. Onetypical example 
read: “Percy Thrillington wishes 
to advise friends that he is feeling 
thoroughly invigorated by the 
crisp and brisk skiing conditions 
in Gstaad.” 

The prankster ads were soon 
revealed to be advanced hype for 
the release of the Thrillington album 
in April 1977, a pop orchestral 
version of Ram supposedly 
conducted by the titular 
arranger, who was, of 
course, a fictitious 
character created 
by Paul апа Linda 
McCartney. Still, 
even when the 
album featured 
an illustration on 
its back cover 
depicting the 
former reflected in 
arecording studio 
window, an EMI press 
officer attempted to 
maintain the ruse with the 
denial, “Percy Thrillington certainly 
isn't Paul McCartney as some 
people seem to think." 

Thrillington had in fact been 
made six years before, in 1971, and 
leftinthe can. A"madcap idea" of 
McCartney's ("Substances were 
involved," he confessed), he'd 
employed arranger Richard Hewson 
to cover the entire albumin ап 
easy-listening style. Hewson had 
first worked with McCartney on his 
production of Mary Hopkin's 1968 
UK Number 1, Those Were The Days, 
before being employed by Phil 
Spector on Let It Beto add the 
controversial orchestrations to 
IMeMineandThe Long And 
Winding Road. "Paul must have 
forgiven me,” reckons Hewson 
today. “He called me up and said, 
‘Doan orchestrated version of Ram.’ 
No more instructions than that.” 


78 MOJO 


Animal magic: 
Paul McCartney 
watches Percy 
Thrillington. 





Thrillington was duly recorded in 
three days at Abbey Road Studio 2, 
featuring session luminaries 
including drummer Clem Cattini 
and bassist Herbie Flowers, with 
McCartney offering casual 
directions from the control booth. 

Hewson was more of a jazz buff 
than a pop fan and so brushed up on 
his Beatles before the sessions. 
Hence the Mike Sammes Singers’ 
spoken word gobbledegook on 
Too Many People and the eerie Fool 
On The Hill-style recorders picking 
out the melody of Uncle Albert/ 
Admiral Halsey. 

“Obviously, did a bit of 


research,” says Hewson. “Working 
with Paul, I thought, I'd better do my 
homework, see what sort of stuff he 
does апумгау. | checked out some 
Beatles, sol obviously picked upa 
few influences of the sort of thing 
thathe was into." 

Thearranger completed the 
project and thought по more of it, 
before he was alerted in 1977 to 
the fact that the album was to be 
finally released as Thrillington. 

For his part, he doesn’t feel its 
strange marketing campaign 
helped the record. 

“| thought that was a bit silly,” he 
says. “It didn’t ring true at all. Не 
would've been better to put К out as 
a Paul McCartney-produced 
instrumental album. It would’ve 
done alot better, I think.” 


Podcast The Crunch: The Story Of 
Richard Hewson is available now. 





=. 
Riddle me, Ramon: Macca's cryptic 
sleevenotes to Linda (above), 


and (right) his erstwhile Beatle 
bandmates... allegedly. 





<_ obvious afterwards. You go, ‘Oh yeah, of course, that must have 
seemed like that.’ A photograph of two beetles shagging. I mean, 
that had to get on the cover. Then afterwards, you go, ‘Oh, but they 
were beetles.’ To me they were just a couple of little ladybirds ог 
insects or something, y’ know. It was just a really funny shot.” 


" ONETHELESS, SOME OF HIS FORMER BANDMATES 
didn’t react at all well to the album. “I don’t think there’s 
one tune on Ram,” said Ringo upon the album’s release. “I 






just feel he’s wasted his time. He seems to be going strange. It’s like 
he’s not admitting he can write great tunes.” 

Lennon, of course, went further. Commenting on Uncle Albert/ 
Admiral Halsey, which became McCartney’s first solo US Number 
1 single, he said, “I liked the beginning. I liked the little bit of ‘hands 
across the water’, but it just tripped off all the time. I didn’t like that 
bit.” His real ire he saved for his own How Do You Sleep?, recorded 
for the Imagine album at the end of May, less than 10 days after the 
release of Ram. Full of blatant gibes (“The sound you make is muzak 
to my ears”), the song upset McCartney deeply. 

“It was a massive, massive bug," he would tell MOJO. *I was just 
really sad, y’know, ’cos there we were... we’d worked together, 
we'd loved each other — although you wouldn't have called it that 
then. But we'd been really tight mates since about 16 or something. 
So, it was a very, very strange turnaround.” 

Lennon twisted the knife by including in the Imagine album pack- 
age a postcard of him grappling with a pig. Elsewhere, the critics, 
perhaps expecting the smooth, radio-friendly side of McCartney, 
weren't impressed by the oddities of Ram. Rolling Stone dismissed 
itas *nonumentally irrelevant”, while Melody Maker reasoned, “It 
must be hell living up to a name... you expect too much 
from a man like McCartney." 

In a revealing side move, McCartney claimed that six of 
the 12 songs on Ram had been straight 50/50 co-writes with 
Linda, sidestepping the terms of his agreement with The 
Beatles’ publishing company Northern Songs, now owned 
by media magnate Lew Grade's ATV. Grade felt that McCart- 
ney was trying to pull a fast one and slapped him with a lawsuit 
for $1 million, a dispute not settled until the singer made the 
James Paul McCartney TV special for Grade in 1973. 

Ram, meanwhile, was a commercial success, Number 1 in 
the UK albums chart and Number 2 in the US. Half a century 
on, it has been critically re-evaluated as perhaps McCartney’s great- 
est post- Beatles album. While the general public might favour the 
hits of Wings' Band On The Run, Ram is the aficionados' choice: the 
sound of Paul McCartney gleefully revelling in his creative freedom. 
“I like the fact that people will come up to me and say, ‘I love that 
Ram album," said its creator. “Or Wings’ Wild Life. 'Cos, y'know, 
what you find now is people like the obscure stuff." 

Ultimately though, for Macca himself, Ram seemed to represent 
vindication and proof that there was life — and a career to be had — 
after The Beatles. 

“It was doubtful, it was never a fait accompli,” he told me. “Another 
impossible ingredient was to take my missus, who had no [musical] 
experience whatsoever, to accompany me on this adventure. And it 
was a wacky thing, y know. But come on, man, we were hippies.” Q) 


Ram, The 50th Anniversary Edition on limited edition half-speed mastered 
vinyl, is released on May 1 4. 


The Thrillington images are © MPL Communications Ltd and were illustrated by Jeff Cumins. 


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YOUR GUIDE TO THE MONTH'S BEST MUSIC 


EDITED BY JENNY BULLEY jenny.bulley@bauermedia.co.uk 


ENS 7 | 








ALBUMS 


Swamp songs: Dan Auerbach and the late 


Tony Joe White 


St. Vincent's superfly '70s-stoked Daddy's Home 


Squid's cephalopodic-motorik thrills 

Brit jazz wonderworkers Sons Of Kemet 

Plus, The Black Keys, Teenage Fanclub, Tony 
Allen, Lisa Gerrard, Godspeed You! Black 
Emperor, Natalie Bergman, Toumani Diabaté 
and more. 


REISSUES 


Spiritualized: Lazer Guided Melodies is still 
glowing strong 

The Who Sell Out one last time 

Under the influence of The Nightingales 

Philadelphia International Records boxed 

File Under: John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. 
Or, his pain, our gain 

Plus, Impulse! buys on vinyl, Fleetwood Mac 
live, P.J. Harvey, huh? Peggy Lee, The Yardbirds 
and more. 


SCREEN 


The country trio: Guy Clark, Susanna Clark 
and Townes Van Zandt's relationship explored 
Plus, New Order live, Creation Stories, 
Poly Styrene and more. 


BOOKS 


Words of expectation:a trio of books 
about The Fall 
Plus, Steve Davis, Bob Dylan and, yes, more 


Bob Dylan. 
Allen, Tony 82 | Harvey, P.J. 98 | Rhys, Gruff 
Balmorhea 86 | lceage 85 | RoseCity Band 
Bergman, Natalie 88 | Jarrett, Keith 97 | Skov, Kira 
Berry, Matt 87 | Joseph, Anthony 89 | Sons OfKemet 
Black Keys, The 87 | Juju 97 | Speace, Amy 
Black Midi 83 | Jurado, Damien 87 | Spiritualized 
Bruce Springsteen 90 Kaleidoscope 94 | Squid 
Chills, The 82 | Kennedy, Sophia 86 | St.Vincent 
Cotter, Bobby 98 | King, Clydie 94 | Stratton, Will 
Crosby, Stills, Nash & KMRU 97 | Superhomard, Le & 
Young 99 Lee, Peggy 97 Farrington , Maxwell 
Crowley, Adrian 84 | Lennon, John 96 | Teenage Fanclub 
Del Amitri 87 Locks, Damon 88 | Telex 
Dinosaur Jr. 87 | Macve, Holly 86 | Tomahawk 
Du Blonde 85 | Mars Volta, The 99 | Toumani Diabaté 
Fakhr, Rogér 98 | Microcorps 88 | VA:Get On Board PIR 
Finley, Robert 89 | Moore,Gary 94 | VA:Impulse! Records 
Fleetwood Mac 98 | Mora, Francisco 94 | VA:PRSNT 
Найт, Nils 82 | Могдеп 95 | МА: 4А0 - Bills & 
Gerrard, Lisa and Morrison, Van 87 | Aches & Blues 
Maxwell, Jules 84 | Mould, Bob 95 | Vynehall Leon 
Ghetto Priest 84 | Natural Information Weezer 
Godspeed You! Black Society 83 | Weller, Paul 
Emperor 83 Nightingales, The 95 | White, Tony Joe 
Growing 85 Outsiders, The 99 Who, The 
Hammill, Peter 86 Pet Shop Boys 98 | William The Conqueror 
Harley, Steve & Pickerel, Mark 82 Witch Camp 
Cockney Rebel 95 | Rag'n'Bone Man 85 | Yardbirds, The 


85 
82 
95 
88 
89 
94 
98 


89 
84 
98 


MOJO 79 


FILTER ALBUMS 








Courtesy President Records 


80 MOJO 


Built on a swamp 


The Black Keys Dan Auerbach has transformed а handful of the swamp king's 
demos into a full studio album. Can you make a polk salad out of scraps? 
asks Andrew Male. Illustration by Arik Roper. 


Tony Joe White 
ЖЖЖЖ 


Smoke From Ihe Chimney 


EASY EYE SOUND. CD/DL/LP 


| T WAS in 1970 when Tony Joe White first heard 





the 
mney 

Brook Benton’s cover of his 1967 song Rainy 2997 

Night In Georgia. The 27-year-old Louisiana- 
born singer had been performing and writing since 
childhood, and that writing came easy, songs that 
somehow managed to turn his experiences of 
everyday Southern life into deep dark tales about 
life and loneliness, prejudice, love and hate. He'd 
spent his early twenties writing and recording for 
Monument Records, with one of his earliest songs, 
Polk Salad Annie, becoming a live staple for Elvis 
Presley throughout the 1970s. However, it wasn't 
until he heard Benton's *comeback" cover of 
Rainy Night that he realised something had been 
missing from his sound. 

“Гуе [always] wanted revenge on that song,” he 
told author and music scholar Andria Lisle in 2006. 
“I never did like my version of it. It didn't have soul in it — I was 





Чолу joe 
smoke oe 
riom 






“On White’s 
sweaty swamp- 
rockers the 


band and 
Auerbach get 
it exactly 
right.” 


BACK STORY: 
BOBBY KEYS 

e The keyboard playing 
of Bobby Wood is one 
ofthe most prominent 
and defining sounds 
on Smoke From The 
Chimney. If it calls to 
mind such classic 
albums as Dusty In 
Memphis, Elvis Presley's 
Back in Memphis or 
Bobby Womack’s 
Understanding that's 
because Wood played 
on them all. A linchpin 
member of American 
Studio's Memphis Boys 
session players, he 
also defined the rich 
lonesome studio 

sound of Mickey 
Newbury’s early ’70s 
albums and has played 
with everyone else from 
Willie Nelson, Johnny 
Cash and Tammy 
Wynette to Wilson 
Pickett, The Box Tops 
and Joe Tex. Dubbed 
Elvis's favourite piano 
player by the King 
himself, the Mississippi 
marvel is currently 

80 years old and still 
going strong. 





playing guitar too fast, doing a ballad like 
a horse wanting to run." 

That “soul” is something TJW chased for 
the rest of his life. In his early 1970s albums 
such as Tony Joe White (1970), The Train I'm 
On (1972) and Homemade Ice Cream (1973), 
you can hear it there in his deep sonorous 
voice and wild swampy guitar, flanked by 
David Briggs’ ВЗ, Robert McGuffie’s fluid 
electric bass, and the massed brass ranks of 
Wayne Jackson and Memphis Horns. Like a 
lot of "70s recording artists he lost his way 
in the '80s and '90s, but even then he 
managed to cut a pretty decent disco album 
for Casablanca Records (ironically entitled 
The Real Thang), and write a brace of hits 
for Tina Turner (Steamy Windows and 
Undercover Agent For The Blues) that 
dripped with a humid intensity. 

However, it was across the handful of 
albums White recorded during the final 
20 years of his life that he got closest 
to revenging that Brook Benton cover. 

The starting point is there in 200178 
appropriately titled The Beginning; just the 
then 58-year-old singer, his harmonica, his 
guitar, and his deep, rumbling grainy vocal 
working their way through songs that 
seemed to access something deeper and 
darker than the singer had ever examined 
before, with a trio of tracks — Going Back 
To Bed, Wonder Why I Feel So Bad, 
Raining On My Life — seemingly dealing 
with his own struggles with depression. 
White never again went that raw and 
honest across a whole album, but he would 


repeatedly return to that style. It became his soul. 
And as such, when, in the wake of TJW's death in 
2018, his son and long-time manager Jody started 
sorting through 15 years of home recordings of 
mostly just White Sr and his Fender Stratocaster, 
the thought must have crossed his mind to release 
these tracks in their raw state. However, since first 
meeting The Black Keys in 2009, Jody White had 
hoped and planned for a TTW/Dan Auerbach 

eu collaboration. Which is what we have here. An 

= album authored as much by Auerbach as it is by 
TJW, an album located specifically in the sound 
and style of the late singer's late-'60s and early- 
1970s albums; retro-restoration, if you will. 

The attention to detail is impressive, with 
Auerbach bringing in such esteemed Nashville 
session players as keyboardist Bobby Wood [see 
Back Story], garlanded pedal-steel master Paul 
Franklin and esteemed country guitarist Billy 
Sanford to his Easy Eye Sound studio to play 
alongside friends and former charges like Marcus 
King and fiddler Stewart Duncan. 

Interestingly, the album's opening track, the 
richly melancholy Smoke From The Chimney, leads 
us in with the bare sound of TJW's voice and guitar and a little 
authentic tape hiss, but very soon we're almost in Billy Sherrill 
“countrypolitan” territory with Bobby Wood's sweet, lilting organ 
shimmering alongside the honeyed backing vocals of all-female 
mariachi band Flor de Toloache. By contrast, the next track, Boot 
Money, is a grinding slice of swamp funk about a working man 
who always keeps a little extra cash in his heel, but even here you 
wonder whether TJW would have kept it tighter, meaner, with a 
few less electric guitar flourishes. 

It boils down to a question of which tracks suit Auerbach's lush 
production, and which don't. The lazy romantic heartbreak of 
Del Rio You're Making Me Cry feels perfectly at home in its 
hothouse production setting, a song smothered in its own sadness, 
but on tracks such as the conceptually overworked Listen To 
Your Song or grand country requiem Over You, the mood is 
more claustrophobic; reaching for sweeping countrypolitan 
grandeur but feeling more like a panic attack in a wardrobe full 
of Nudie suits. Maybe the issue is just not knowing what White 
wanted from these bigger, romantic numbers, but on the sweaty, 
swamp-rockers the band and Auerbach get it exactly right. Dark- 
and-stormy-night shaggy-dog tale Scary Stories creeps and prowls 
with a deep midnight groove that's thrillingly edgy, while Bubba 
Jones, a good ol' boy fishing tale of the one that got away, is 
transformed into a classic TTW storytelling epic, up there with 
the likes of Roosevelt And Ira Lee or High Sheriff Of Calhoun 
Parrish. What those tracks have is that elusive sense of soul that 
White was forever chasing, a little grit, grain and heart to go 
with that Nashville sound. 

TJW admitted himself that his core sound was an elusive beast 
and so maybe we shouldn't be too surprised that not every track 
here captures it. As such, it's not faint praise to say that this act 
of restoration convinces as a good Tony Joe White album that 
could have been plucked from anywhere during his career. Both 
the shame and the joy of this project is that in those moments 
when Auerbach and team strip it right back to its essential parts — 
on Bubba Jones, Boot Money and Scary Stories — they sound like 
White at his absolute peak. 


















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Rose City Band 
ЖЖЖЖ 
Earth Trip 


THRILL JOCKEY. CD/DL/LP 


Moon Duo/Wooden Shjips 
wizard Ripley Johnson's 
lonesome adventure. 


Johnson's sublime space-rock 
has often been anchored 
around binary opposites: on 
Moon Duo's Occult Architecture 
(2017), Vol. 1 explored noctur- 
nal/daemonic themes, Vol. 2 
sunnier/transcendent moods. 
Where Summerlong, last year's 
second solo outing as Rose 
City Band, conjured July- 
August joys in a warm sonic 
glow created during winter 
2019's relative optimism, this 
third one inevitably reflects 
2020's bleaker outlook. Silver 
Roses opens with the bitter- 
sweet vibe of CSNY's Helpless, 
complete with mournful lyrics 
(“Bluebirds flyin'/l'm so alone") 
and Barry Walker's tear-jerking 
pedal-steel. While autumnal 
gems like Rabbit chime with 
recent months' universal expe- 
rience of isolation and inertia, 
Earth Trip also mirrors the 
salvation many have found in 
nature (In The Rain; Lonely 
Places), its gentle, J.J. Cale- 
esque country-rock tempos 
evocative of restorative rustic 








FILTER ALBUMS 


rambling. Though introspec- 

tive and downbeat, Ripley 

characteristically ends on 

a high, as Dawn Patrol's nine- 

minute exploration brings new 

horizons and, yes, hope. 
Andrew Perry 


Kira Skov 


ЖЖЖ 
Spirit Tree 
STUNT. CD/DL/LP 


Locally renowned Dane 
takes on the world. Guests 
include Bill Callahan. 


. In Denmark, 
4) Kira Skov's 
| celebrated 
f status results 
.. from her being 
A analogous to 
a union lof Nick Cave and Patti 
Smith. Indeed, in regards to 
the latter, Skov's new duets 
album features the self- 
penned Horses and an appear- 
ance by Lenny Kaye. Also 
heard are Bill Callahan, Mark 
Lanegan, Lionel Liminana and 
fellow Nordic luminaries Marie 
Fisker and Jenny Wilson. 
Despite periods in London and 
New York, and having worked 
with Tricky, Skov has not 
resonated widely beyond her 
native Denmark. Spirit Tree's 
admiring and rarefied cast list 
is enviable, yet this is her 
album, one oscillating 
between Arvo Part-infused 
folkiness and dark, trip-hop- 
tinged singer-songwriter 
excursions. Idiosyncrasy is key. 
The quirky Dusty Kate associ- 
ates Springfield and Bush in 
the lyrics: “do your Kate Bush 
thing for me... just like Dusty.” 
Spirit Tree is an international 


calling card defined by Skov’s 
innate unpredictability. 
Kieron Tyler 


Mark Pickerel 
And His Praying 
Hands 

KKK 


Rebel In The Rearview 
BANDCAMP. DL 


Ex-Screaming Tree covers 
neo-torch singers’ songs and 
country mavericks. 


ES For his fourth 
BEBE ih |. mds full-length 

EX with his Pray- 
ing Hands 
ج‎ ты] collective, 
| == Mark Pickerel 
энесен an eclectic set of 
covers, refracted via his trade- 
mark blend of outlaw country 
ache and garage rock edge. 
Pickerel's selection of songs is 
consistently inspired, his treat- 
ments perfectly tailored. His 
reading of Lucinda Williams’ 
Essence, a ballad equating love 
with drug addiction - debili- 
tating and ecstatic in equal 
measures - is richly noir, 
Pickerel lending it a powerful 
Johnny Cash-esque burr, while 
an offbeat take of Old Brown 
Shoe reimagines The Beatles' 
blackly comic gallop as mourn- 
ful bar-side Americana. Best of 
the bunch is a smouldering 
cover of Back To Black, reup- 
holstering Amy Winehouse's 
neo-classic torch song with 
swooning country guitar and 
Pickerel's deliciously regretful 
tone. Throughout, the combi- 
nation of shimmering, melan- 
cholic tremolo and Pickerel's 
parched twang delivers sides 







with enough period vibe to be 
a perfect fit on Quentin Taran- 
tino's next soundtrack. 

Stevie Chick 


The Chills 
ххх 


Scatterbrain 
FIRE. CD/DL/LP 


New Zealand’s enduring 
wonky popsters put their 
leader’s past behind them. 


MIN Scatterbrain is 
| | the first Chills 
| album since 
_ their guiding 
[ light, Martin 

ái zm Phillipps, laid 
buc the life-threatening 
impact of his involvement with 
alcohol and drugs in the 2019 
documentary The Chills: The 
Triumph And Tragedy Of 
Martin Phillipps. Musically, 
this is through-and-through 
a Chills album, where Phillipps 
and his ever-mutable support- 
ing players fuse moodiness 
with his instinctive feel for 
pop. The rolling rhythms and 
folky melodies are present and 
correct. But Scatterbrain is 
about more than the music. 
"Give me the power of ancient 
stones," sings Phillipps on the 
album's opener, Monolith. 
"You're immortal, but l'Il have 
to let you go,” he declares on 
You're Immortal. Elsewhere, 
Little Alien's subject is 
implored to "battle on". 
Overall, The Chills’ seventh 
album is about Phillipps 
drawing a line between now 
and what was seen on screen, 
gathering strength and 
moving forward. 





Kieron Tyler 





Teenage Fanclub 


ЖЖЖЖ 
Endless Arcade 


PEMA. CD/DL/LP 






























After the Love has gone: beloved 
Glaswegians regroup. 


THE SAD departure of Gerard 
Love in 2018 initially seemed an 
insurmountable obstacle, but as 

far as crunch-time for a singular 
songwriter's circle goes, Endless 
Arcade exudes pragmatism. Norman 
Blake and Raymond McGinley 
simply divvy-up its 12 luminous 
songs and relish their extra air-time. 
The procurement of Euros Childs 
(Gorky's Zygotic Mynci; 
Jonny) on keyboards and 
additional backing vocals 
acts like a beautiful 
failsafe. Blake's 
relationship break-up 
and return to Glasgow 
has sparked some 
stupendous material, 

not least The Sun Won't seems to e more 
Shine On Me, nodding at кн нете чэ: ‘al than ever оп Come 
Sonny & Cher's I Got You Babe, and With Me and The Future, crackers 
faith-in-people-not-God song, I’m both. A searching, typically heart- 


The sun is shining 
on them again: 
Teenage Fanclub. 


More Inclined. 
Elsewhere, McGinley 


warming record about middle-aged 
men somewhat adrift, yet ultimately 
anchored to people and place, 
Endless Arcade testifies to the 
Fannies’ endurance. 





James McNair 





82 MOJO 


Nils Frahm 
ЖЖЖЖ 


Graz 
ERASED TAPES. CD/DL/LP 





Neo-classical poster boy's 
long-buried suite of grand 
piano recordings. 
Nils Frahm has 
pushed hard at 
the boundaries 
Em of the pianist's 
| craft - physi- 
cally changing 
the form (2011's Felt), playing 
with a broken thumb (2012's 
Screws) and riffing with scale 
(using a 14-foot Klavins for 
2015's Solo). This previously 
hidden live set, recorded in 
Austria in 2009, captures the 
German showman at his most 
minimal, his gift for fluid lines 
and rapturous melodies catch- 
ing the emotions in unexpected 
ways on the insular, intimate 
Kurzum, while Went Missing's 
freeing refrains are as fragile as 
a butterfly's wings. Forthright 
live favourite Hammers shakes 
the reverie, its ghost of a beat 
enhanced by Peter Broderick's 
low voice, the eternal darkness 
of O I End breaking into beam- 
ing hope via a sequence of 
pealing, sustained notes that 
merge lambent classical chops 
with Keith Jarrett's dazzling 
immediacy. 


Andy Cowan 


Tony Allen 


ЖЖЖЖ 
There Is No End 


BLUE NOTE FRANCE. CD/DL/LP 


Last studio outing of the man 
who put the beat in Afrobeat 
is a rapper's delight. 


Before his sudden death in 
2020 Tony Allen expressed his 
desire to give voice to a new 
generation of rappers, live- 
jamming a series of beats he 
heard hidden within hip-hop's 
most iconic tracks. Those 
singular takes from Fela Kuti's 
ex-Africa 70 bandleader are 
well matched here; Nah Eeto's 
mellow, Swahili-steeped 
delivery and Sampha The 
Great's fleet wordplay riding a 
peerless light jumble of snare- 
driven grooves, micro-rolls and 
fills, with much ghosting 
beneath the surface. Whether 
it’s more forceful, electronically 
detailed efforts with The 
Koreatown Oddity and Danny 
Brown or the bristling mono- 
tones of Jeremiah Jae and 
poet Ben Okri (the latter with 
a masterful Skepta chorus 
earworm), these tracks feel 
more like intimate conversa- 
tions, with Allen's boundless 
curiosity shining through. 
Andy Cowan 





enad Mine 


Udoma Janssen 


касс ii 


Cavalcade 
ROUGH TRADE. CD/DL/LP 


One of the 
f admirable 
ES qualities of 
Black Midi's 
2019 debut 
Schlagenheim 
was its indifference to being 
understood, its juxtapositions 
and hairpin turns leaving no 
space for listeners to passively 
consume. This follow-up is a 
work of similarly restless, aloof 
brilliance, dense with riddles 
to decode. Opening with John 
L’s hurricane of staccato riffing, 
slashing violins and unnerving 
narration, Cavalcade careens 
through sinister balladry 
(Marlene Dietrich), apocalyptic 
prog (Slow) and echo-soaked 
art-rock set to junglist rhythms 
(Dethroned). Even more ambi- 
tious than Schlagenheim, 
Cavalcade's wild, unstinting 
shifts in tone risk incoherence, 
but the musicians' chops and 
Geordie Greep's idiosyncratic 
vocals are always in service of 
a communal vision that's 
consistently electrifying, occa- 
sionally impenetrable and, on 
the closing Ascending Fourth, 
beautiful. Certainly not easy 
listening, then, Cavalcade 
harbours considerable thrills 
for those up to its challenges. 
Stevie Chick 


IIIIII 
Godspeed You! 
E ure 





G “d's S Pee Al 
STATE’S END! 


CONSTELLATION. CD/DL/LP 


Unstinting 
harbingers of 
the apocalypse 
for 25 years, 
Montreal’s 
Godspeed 
could be forgiven for making 
their Covid-era album a gleeful 
act of vindication. As the rest 
of us catch up with their 
concept of End Times, though, 
there’s an admirable urgency 
rather than despondency to 
this seventh batch of anarcho- 
syndicalist post-rock: note 
track four’s title, Our Side Has 
To Win. And while opener 

A Military Alphabet begins 
with a nostalgic passage of 
shortwave static and marches 
on remorselessly for 20 min- 
utes, it’s also a useful reminder 
of what a tremendously 
powerful and, in their way, 
accessible band Godspeed can 
be. For all their uncompromis- 
ing aversion to the mainstream, 
this remains far from forbid- 
ding music, with an orches- 
trated heft that’s as close to 
Ennio Morricone as it is Glenn 
Branca. In an alternative, 
better world, Hollywood 
soundtracks still beckon. 

John Mulvey 


nor и 


Seeking Ви Gods 


ROUGH TRADE. CD/DL/LP 


Cave T cain fe nct £ ? £^» B^ 
seven h UID ЧЕГО 
"ора |e 

| i 





With records 
about 18th 
ч century Welsh 


1 explorers and 
American car 
magnates 


under his belt, Gruff Rhys is no 
stranger to the concept album. 
Seeking New Gods is the high- 
est yet, though, inspired by 
Mount Paektu, the volcano on 
the China-North Korea border. 
Contested land, volatile states, 
imminent extinction: the songs 
blur boundaries between the 
geopolitical and the psycho- 
logical, crossing melancholy 
landscapes with a knapsack 
full of sustaining melodies and 
oxygen-rich synthesizers. Loan 
Your Loneliness forces Queen 
and Eno into a portmanteau; 
Hiking In Lightning's What Goes 
On thump pushes on through 
the heaviest weather, while the 
cosmic repetitions of Distant 
Snowy Peaks make just lying 
down and having a nap in the 
cold seem like a great idea. As 
on 2018's Babelsberg and 2019's 
Pang!, Rhys excels at holding 
anxiety and unease up to the 
light without becoming harsh; 
Seeking New Gods keeps that 
balance beautifully. 

Victoria Segal 





111111111 
Natural 
Information 
Society With 
‚үлп Parker 


p D X ОР 





с (Out of 


Our Constrictions) 
EREMITE. CD/DL/LP 






S А оя 
| am this writer saw 

| 10 2019 was a 

| Set by Natural 


DOGS Society at Café 
Oto in London; a marathon, 
ecstatic jam for which the 
Chicago band were joined by 
ornery free jazz vet Evan Parker 
on soprano sax. It's a relief and 
a delight to discover, nearly 
two years on, that the show 
was every bit as breathtaking 
as itseemed at the time, thanks 
to this exceptional live record- 
ing. NIS's shtick is an often 
serene mix of spiritual jazz, 
minimalist composition and 
global trance rituals, anchored 
by harmonium and the three- 
string Moroccan guimbri that 
core member Joshua Abrams 
uses for low-end vibrations in 
lieu of a bass. Here, though, 
they're in party mode, with 
Parker and bass clarinettist 
Jason Stein improvising 
around one another, while 
drummer Mikel Avery holds a 
relentless four-to-the-floor. 
Seventy-five non-stop minutes 
of high-end squawk and groove. 

John Mulvey 





Sons ог Kemet 


Black To "Tha Future 


IMPULSE! CD/DL/LP 


THAT SONS Of Kemet are the key group 
at the epicentre of Britain's new jazz 
reverberations is unquestionable, but in 
some ways they are unlikely poster boys. 
A tuba player, two drummers, and a 
saxophonist in Shabaka Hutchings 
inclined to forego lyrical flights in favour 
of Morse code staccatos: these are quirky 
characteristics, and despite a live dynamic 
that appeals to rump-shakers and chin- 
strokers alike, their albums have been far 
too idiosyncratic to serve as a template 
for any who would follow, and Black To 
I he Future is a reminder that they remain 
representatives of no one but themselves. 
A combination of group performances 
— long jams that unlocked 
the most telepathic grooves they've yet 
put on record — with lockdown overdubs, 
most notably stacks of exotic woodwind 
instruments played by Hutchings (not to 
mention, on the track Hustle, a conch 
shell from Martinique played by tubist 
Theon Cross), that add dreamlike layers, 
it's sonically deeper and more emotionally 
engaging, from start to finish, than any 
previous SOK release. And while vocal 
contributions on jazz recordings tend 


to polarise, SOK have doubled down, 


cut in late 2019 


with five out of 11 tracks 


featuring rappers and poets. 


Yet Kojey Radical (on 
Hustle, against Cross's 
sound-system-sized tuba 
grunt) and foundational 


grime artist D Double E (on 








Sons Of Kemet: 


power 


For The Culture) underline what is 
already gritty and polemical in the Sons 
Of Kemet sound, while Moor Mother’s 
spooked chant on the relentless Pick Up 
Your Burning Cross is defiance incarnate. 
Joshua Idehen tops and tails affairs with 
sceptical, Last Poets-adjacent takes on 
white liberal empathy in the BLM age. 

“I do not want your equality,” he states 
on Field Negus, and more challengingly, 
over SOK’s free jazz squalls on the closing 
track, Black: “Leave us alone.” 

Other inspired collaborators include 
neo-spiritual-jazz free radical Angel Bat 
Dawid and venerated British tenorist 
Steve Williamson — shiny and fluid 
against Hutchings’ dark mutterings on 
Field Negus — but ultimately it’s the 
voices of SOK themselves that sound most 
clearly. Drummers Tom Skinner and 
Edward Wakili-Hick are more meshed, 
and visceral, than ever (it’s hard to 
imagine the Seb Rochford-included line- 
up of SOK's first two albums coming on 
so strong) and Cross feels like the 
guardian of the group's swing, especially 
on the calypso-ish Think Of Home. 

Meanwhile, Hutchings' mastery, 
not only of the saxophone but also in 
charging largely instrumental music with 
meaning, seems complete. Combining 
Caribbean rhythms, Afrocentric flutes 
and grime (oh, and some ‘jazz’) is not an 
accidental delineation of the songlines 
flowing through the African diaspora, 
or the problems of articulating a way 
forward, in terms of race and power 
structures, that will be heard and acted 
upon. On the album’s standout Let 
The Circle Be Unbroken 
his tenor becomes a 
desperate collage of shouts 
and gasps until it occurs 
to you, with a chill of 
horror, what’s happening. 
He’s choking. 




















MOJO 83 


b ow 


West s 


Annie Clark's masterwork 


evokes the sights and sounds 
of 19/0s New York City. 
Ву Tom Doyle. 


St. Vincent 


KKKKK 
[Daddy s Home 


LOMA VISTA. CD/DL/LP 


THE LAST WE saw of Annie Erin Clark 
AKA St. Vincent, on her Grammy- 
winning fifth LP Masseduction, she was 
harnessing her frantic feelings in panicky 
and dirty synth-pop, strapped-in tight, 
white-knuckling through a turbulent 
ascent into mainstream fame. Four years 
on, that state of high anxiety has abated, 
replaced by a far calmer state of reflection 
and an act of time travel to the early "70s. 

The back story of Daddy's Home is a 
real one. In 2010, Clark's father was 
imprisoned for 12 years for his part in a 
$43-million stock market manipulation. 
The opening verse of the title track, 
rendered in woozy Broadway jazz, finds 
her signing autographs in the prison's 
visitors’ room, waiting for “inmate 502". 
The strange dichotomy between this part 
of her life and her Tiffany ad campaign- 
level celebrity is made explicit, as is the 
toll on Clark herself: “Yeah, you did some 
time/Well, I did some time too." 

Clark's relationship with her dad has a 
greater effect on the sound of Daddy 
Home, however, since it drove her back to 
his "70s record collection. Significantly, 
it's an album made at the Hendrix- 
founded Electric Lady Studios 
in Greenwich Village, where 
Clark and co-producer Jack 
Antonoff — brilliant here on 
rolling James Gadson-styled 


drum grooves and syncopating 








84 MOJO 


ide story 





St. Vincent, in 
a calmer place. 





Wurlitzer electric piano — have tuned 
into the echoes in the walls, whether left 
there by Stevie Wonder or, in the fuzzy, 
funky Pay Your Way In Pain, Bowie and 
Lennon recording Fame. 

As a depiction of New York past, with 
its Donny Hathaway vibes and wandering 
flute and electric sitar counterpoints, 
Down And Out Downtown is vivid and 
beautiful, introducing recurring lyrical 
motifs: flowers bought in a bodega, 
morning journeys in last night’s clothes, 
visions of the tops of skyscrapers. Two 
tracks meanwhile take a carefully-plotted 
trip to The Dark Side Of The Moon, the 
lovely drowsiness of Us And Them in the 
rising-from-a-blackout tale Live In The 
Dream and the even slower, druggier The 
Laughing Man, with its graphic admission, 
“Like the heroines of Cassavetes/I’m 
underneath the influence daily.” 

Touches such аз these make Daddy's 
Home all the more cinematic: the 
individual in ...At The Holiday Party 
whose Gucci purse is “a pharmacy”; 
invoking the Andy Warhol/Lou Reed 
muse in Candy Darling, the “queen of 
South Queens”. Elsewhere, My Baby 
Wants A Baby takes a surprising left- 
turn, borrowing Sheena Easton’s 1980 
hit 9 To 5 and giving it the quiet 
desperation of late-period Abba, while 
adding sly humour and fears of 
potential parenthood. 

It’s masterful stuff: a full conceptual 
realisation, filled with great melodies, 
deep grooves, colourful characterisations 
and sonic detail that reveals itself over 
repeated plays. It’s also a record made 
lor vinyl, tailored to be 
heard as a label spins. 

But even if its heart is in 
the '70s, Daddy's Home 
is a keeper for the 

| decades to come. 





«LM 
WALL SO | 


















Adrian Crowley 
ЖЖЖЖ 

The Watchful Eye Of 
The Stars 


CHEMIKAL UNDERGROUND. CD/DL/LP 


Irish bard’s eighth album, 
recorded with P.J. Harvey 
collaborator John Parrish. 


Crowley's weathered baritone 
and restrained elegance are 
seductive weapons, but he's 
a master storyteller too: The 
Watchful Eye... opens with, 
"Day опе, stole on board a 
northbound ship", and the 
spell is cast. Therein, Crowley 
mirrors fellow baritones Leon- 
ard Cohen and Bill Callahan's 
model of maximal wordage 
and minimal arrangement, 
even when an orchestra is 
used. The sea is a constant 
companion: Ships On The 
Water ebbs on a sombre guitar 
that's very Street Hassle; in a 
gentler Bread And Wine, he's 
"playing piano in a harbour 
bar", watching the crowd. On 
land, Crow Song recalls the 
departure of an injured bird 
Crowley nursed (“And | was 
joyous for you/But shattered 
none-the-less”) before a fune- 
real woodwind coda. Crowley 
makes enthralling company. 
Martin Aston 


Ghetto Priest 


ЖЖЖ 
Big People Миѕіс 


RAMROCK. CD/DL/LP 


Evergreen reggae and swing 
ballads revisited. 


; Sweet-voiced 
singer Ghetto 
Priest is an 
On-U Sound 
stalwart and 

| Asian Dub 

Foundation collaborator who's 

worked with Sinéad O'Connor 

and various underground 
outfits. Produced by Aswad's 
keyboardist, Carlton 'Bubblers' 

Ogilvie, and mixed by Adrian 

Sherwood, Big People Music 

explores the reggae, swing 

and ballads of his father's 
generation, reconfiguring 
favourites for contemporary 
ears. Transformations are 
rendered with thought and an 
attention to detail, with Aaron 

Neville's Hercules becoming a 

driving roots groove featuring 

moody horns, while The May- 
tones' Madness uses only 
acoustic guitar and a touch of 
strings. Slim Smith's Blessed 

Are The Meek gets a propul- 

sive backbeat, spongy key- 

boards, and a dubwise mix 

with plenty of subtle phasing. 

Though the Dean Martin and 

Nat King Cole covers verge on 

the overly sentimental, every- 

thing is delivered with good 





taste, the individual touches 
revealed on closer listening. 
David Katz 


LL 


Lisa Gerrard 
& Jules Maxwell 


ЖЖЖ 


Burn 
ATLANTIC CURVE. CD/DL/LP 


Dead Can Dancers file long- 
gestating venture. James 
Chapman of MAPS assists. 
f Singing in a 
e tongue of her 
we own creation d 
ЮЭ la Liz Fraser of 
© Cocteau Twins, 
— 7*3 Lisa Gerrard 
here collaborates with DCD 
bandmate/lrish theatre com- 
poser Jules Maxwell on a part- 
improvised album that has 
shades of early Vangelis, mod- 
ern electronica, and Bulgarian 
and Anatolian folk. On Heleali 
and Orion, the operatic tics of 
Gerrard's voice merge with 
Maxwell's anthemic, cinematic 
music spectacularly, conjuring 
a gutsier, less ethereal Enya. 
Six years in the making, the 
record was seeded when 
Gerrard and Maxwell began 
writing for Bulgarian choir Le 
Mystere des Voix Bulgares at 
home in Australia, and eventu- 
ally finished with James Chap- 
man at the suggestion of Ger- 
rard's publisher, who noted 
MAPS' music, too, had "big 
horizons at its core". Overall, 
the euphoric, sometimes 
ambient Burn sounds like an 
enigmatic requiem; music for 
your own act of remembrance. 
James McNair 


Witch Camp 
(Ghana) 
ЖЖЖЖ 


I've Forgotten Now 
Who | Used То Be 


SIX DEGREES. DL 





Alternative subtitle: 'Now 
That's What I Call Witch 
House, Vol 1'. 


To say that lan 







FETT rmn B ; 
rennan's 
| musical col- 
P f/ = laborators 
H Ру ar! _ Î haven't usually 
г А had easy lives 


would be putting it mildly, but 
the records he elicits from them 
are far from a cheap holiday in 
other people's misery. These 
20 short tracks, recorded in 
Ghanaian refuges for those 
accused of witchcraft, have the 
same electrifying intensity as 
his earlier releases by Cambo- 
dian and Rwandan genocide 
survivors or the hard-pressed 
albinos on Ukerewe Island. 
Check out the lusty whoops of 
Love Please, cathartic surge of 
Witch Song or spookily percus- 
sive backing vocals on | Am 
A Beggar For A Home. These 
primal statements of personal 
identity have melodies picked 
out on guitar or marimba and 
rhythms tapped out on handy 
household objects. If that's not 
the living spirit of rock'n'roll, | 
don't know what is. 

Ben Thompson 


Zackery Michael 


Jeff Bierk 


Du Blonde 
ххх 


Homecoming 
DAEMON TV. CD/DL/LP 


Beth Jeans Houghton takes 
control and embraces a 
headlong rush. 


Homecoming's 
punky power- 
pop is as 
unstoppable 
as a lava flow. 
Album opener 
Pull The Plug partners an 
insistent chug with a soaring 
chorus line. | Can't Help You 
There, Medicated and All The 
Way are further garage pop 
nuggets, each with dark lyrics 
about disassociation, finding 
identity, and loss. Musically, 
Beth Jeans Houghton’s fourth 
album and third as Du Blonde 
is at odds with the folk-pop- 
quirk of her 2012 debut Yours 
Truly, Cellophane Nose and the 
angular, raw and rocky 
approach of albums two and 
three. Homecoming's guests 
include Andy Bell, Ezra Furman 
and Shirley Manson. Adding 
little, they seem rather super- 
fluous (as does learning the 
album was written on a guitar 
given to Houghton by Curb 
Your Enthusiasm actor Jeff 
Garlin). Self-recorded and 
self-issued, Homecoming 
arrives with its author's 
acknowledgments of queerness 
and being on antidepressants. 
A major marker on the path 

to self-determination. 

Kieron Tyler 








Rag'n'Bone Man | 
ЖЖЖЖ 
Life By Misadventure 


COLUMBIA. CD/DL/LP/MC 


Rory Graham’s second LP. 
Not like the first. At all. 


One of the more intriguing 
aspects of Human, the ragbag 
first Rag'n'Bone Man album, 
was how to follow it. Rory 
Graham ticked a multitude of 
boxes - Hozier wannabe, more 
earthy Gregory Porter, gospel- 
loving soul-blues growler, 
Americana maven, country- 
tinged rapper - all without 
sounding especially derivative. 
Admirably, in the wake of 
marital separation (addressed 
only in the unblinking Talking 
To Myself) he's taken the 
nuclear option, relocating to 
write and record in Nashville 
with his usual British band and 
a gaggle of crack sessioneers, 
including Prince sidekick 
Wendy Melvoin. Toning down 
the gospel-soul inflections, 
he's less scattergun and easier 
to pin down (a British Ray 
LaMontagne isn't too wide 

of the mark). More crucially, 
Graham's songwriting has 





blossomed, be it on the 
pounding All You Ever Wanted 
or the more ruminative Alone. 
All things being equal, he's 
heading to the major leagues. 
John Aizlewood 


ТИШ 
Growing 


ЖЖЖЖ 
Diptych 
SILVER CURRENT. CD/DL/LP 


Master purveyors of heavy 
ambience discover their 
spiritual home. 

T" Silver Current, 
the label run 
by Ethan Miller 
of Comets On 
Fire, Howlin 
Rain and Heron 
Oblivion, might not be an 
immediately obvious home 
for an ambient record: Miller's 
psychedelic aesthetic has 
always seemed noisier and 
'jammier' rather than medita- 
tive. But Olympia's Growing 
are not a typical ambient 
band, and for the best part 

of two decades they've been 
attacking new age-adjacent 
music with a punk energy 

akin to that of Miller, while 
avoiding the gothic intima- 
tions of doom that can bedevil 
some other practitioners of 
heavy drone. Diptych com- 
prises two tracks of gracefully 
percolating hum and flicker, 
where sustained tones of 
guitars and keyboards flow 
effortlessly into one another, 
and occasional fizzles of 
amp-burn punctuate the 
dream state. Strip off the 
rock'n'roll trappings of 
Spiritualized circa Pure Phase, 
or tune in to Terry Riley at 


Various 


ЖЖЖЖ 





Bills & Aches & Blues 


4AD. CD/DL/LP 


Self-starting 41st anniversary celebration 


from pioneering label. 


THIS RECORD’S concept is simple: artists 
on 4AD’s current roster cover tracks from 
the label's past. When Bills & Aches & Blues 
works — and it nearly always does — it's more 
complex, though, pulling together the 
threads of an enduring artistic legacy to 
intriguing effect. US Girls, for example, take 
the malign buzzing energy of The Birthday 
Party's Junkyard and trap it under a glassy 
dreampop dome, while ТКау Maidza deftly 
trepans Pixies’ Where Is My Mind? It’s 
interesting to see who is chosen: no Cocteau 
Twins (although SOHN cover This Mortal 
Coil’s version of Song To The Siren), but a 
strong showing for Grimes, Deerhunter and 
The Breeders (the latter covered by Tune- 
Yards, Big Thief and Bradford 
Cox). Profits from the record go 
to Los Angeles-based charity The 
Harmony Project for the first year, 
but as birthday celebrations go, 
this is a welcome gift for all. 


Victoria Segal 


his most horizontal, and you 
are close to the immersive 
pleasure here. 

John Mulvey 


111111111 
Iceage 


ЖЖЖЖ 
Seek Shelter 


MEXICAN SUMMER. CD/DL/LP 


Danish punks deliver joyous 
scuzz rock thrills. 


From the nihil- 
istic punk of 
their 2011 
debut to the 
ааа theatrical howl 
20 C aw" into the abyss 
of 2018's Beyondless, Copenha- 
gen's Iceage deal in various 
degrees of loud and intense. 
Despite being recorded in a 
dilapidated, leaking studio 
(the band played amid buckets 
and had to wrap mikes in dish- 
cloths to avoid electrocution), 
their fifth LP introduces a new 
element into their mutant 
rock'n'roll stew - joy. Producer 
Pete Kember brings much 

of the narco gospel fire of 
Spacemen 3 (not least in the 
inclusion of May The Circle Be 
Unbroken in High & Hurt) and 
throughout Seek Shelter deliv- 
ers the sort of ragged MC5/ 
Stooges/Stones cocktail Primal 
Scream have spent a career 
trying to nail. There's Extricate- 
era Fall in Vendetta's demented 
lurch and the punch-drunk 
Drink Rain could even be 
considered a ballad of sorts. 
At a time when you can't see 
other people, let alone be in 
sweaty a room full of them, it's 
a reminder of just how life- 
affirming music can be. 

Chris Catchpole 








FILTER ALBUMS 


Le Superhomard 
& Maxwell 
Farrington 


ЖЖЖЖ 


Опсе 
TALITRES. CD/DL/LP 


Gallic pop-psych voyager 
conspires with Aussie 


crooner. 


Despite Cass 
Т Elliot's defini- 
tive version, 
John Barry 
and Hal David's 
The Good 
Times Are Coming was always 
ripe for another take. Pleasing, 
then, when Christophe Vaillant 
(aka Le SuperHomard) and 
Maxwell Farrington made it 
the first fruit of a spontaneous 
collaboration in thrall to 
classic '60s crooners and 
the breezy, meticulous 
arrangements upon which 
they soared. Vaillant adjusts 
his palette accordingly, 
dialling down his customary 
electronic flourishes, and 
dialling up low-twanging 
guitars, clever modulations, 
light-orchestral strings and 
enough Burt Bacharach, 
Lee Hazlewood and Jimmy 
Webb-inspired nous to 
ensure that, were this duo 
to gatecrash The Andy 
Williams Show circa 1967, 
they'd fit right in. The twist, 
perhaps, is Farrington's odd 
and unique lyrical voice, full 
of arresting couplets on We, 
Us The Pharaohs, Oysters, 
and North Pole, wherein 
the world-weary protagonist 
fears being eaten by 
a polar bear. 
James McNair 


Welcome gift: 
US Girls visit 
Birthday Party’s 


Junkyard. 


Weezer 


ххх 


Van Weezer 
CRUSH MUSIC/ATLANTIC. CD/DL/LP 


A pop-metal record 
dedicated to the late 
Eddie Van Halen. 


"Look like you could have been 
in Faster Pussycat," sings Rivers 
Cuomo on Precious Metal Girl. 
Like most of Van Weezer's 
concise songs it finds Cuomo 
and his bandmates mourning 
a denim-and-Spandex-clad 
adolescence. All The Good 
Ones [are gone] documents 
romance at the mini-mart, 
Joan Jett-style, Blue Dream 
purloins the riff from Ozzy 
Osbourne's Crazy Train, and 
| Need Some Of That recalls a 
summer riding pushbikes and 
listening to Aerosmith. The 
sentiments charm and Cuomo's 
nose for a tune endures, but the 
drive-time metal supremacy of 
Def Leppard and Mutt Lange 
is never under serious threat. 
To these ears, the standout 
is still The End Of The Game, 
a 2019 single paying warm 
tribute to the EVH playbook. 
"| know that you will crank this 
song/Air-guitaring with your 
headphones on," opines 
Cuomo. Rumbled! 

James McNair 
























MOJO 85 


am ИЯ 


d H 


FILTER ALBUMS | 





Alternative tentacles 


Amphibious millennials thrilling 
post-punk/Krautrock collision. 
By Andrew Perry. 


Squid 
ЖЖЖЖ 
Bright Green Field 


WARP. CD/DL/LP 


ON ONE OF Brexit’s many unfulfilled D-days 
early last year, Squid’s singing drummer Ollie 
Judge travelled by Megabus from London to 
his native Bristol. Breaking off from readin 
JG Ballard’s Concrete Island on the A4 flyover 
at Brentford, the yelpy mid-twentysomething 
soon beheld the gleamingly futuristic HQ of 
pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline and 


Shapeshifters: 
Squid offer 

a tonic for 

the times. 


of his dystopian reading matter. 

As well as informing Judge’s lyrics for 
GSK, the first full track on Squid’s insatiably 
questing debut album, he and his compadres 
decided to make contemporary Britain’s 
mood of Ballardian discomfort into Bright 
Green Field’s loosely themed purpose. 

The five-man combo, who met at uni in 
Brighton, have thus far presented as dextrous 
youngsters referencing the myriad influences 
that Spotify has afforded them. Their 
smattering of EPs, singles and download one- 
offs confused as much as excited, packing 
experimental left-turns (see Town Centre 
EP opener, Savage) as often as exercises in 
thunderous motorik, like 2019’s online- 
only Houseplants. 

To borrow a phrase, Squid contain 


defines them best 

(for now), allowing 
scope to explore hefty 
trance-outs, tempo- 
hopping complexity and 
skronky weirdness en 
route to nailing their 
broad musical vision — 


— " very 2003-4 in its pase 


punk Mime: but also achingly *now', 
especially when topped off with Laurie 
Nankivell's trumpet. 

For them, as for peers Black Country, New 
Road, each track is a shapeshifting narrative. 
Here, Narrator almost anthemises that 
practice, going through Slint-esque twists and 
rhythmic evolutions, before hitting a 
cacophonous crescendo, then receding into 
industrial feedback. 2010, conversely, pinballs 
between Beefheartian off-centre arpeggios 
and Dinosaur Jr. thrash, while Boy Racers 
startlingly resolves into two minutes of 
blaring siren, right off 1973's The Faust Tapes. 

Fortunately, when not flipping between 
jarring juxtapositions, Squid excel at busting 
out an unfettered groove: Pamphlets concludes 
the album with eight minutes of Can-ish 
skyward propulsion — the delirious release 
which justifies all the foregoing tension. 

Producer Dan Carey (BC,NR; Black Midi; 
Toy) brings cohesion to the multiplicity, while 
Judge, hitherto an impenetrable vocal 
presence, sheds light on his oblique yet 
acutely targeted writing, explaining how 
Documentary Filmmaker concerns anorexia 
among his friends. Elsewhere, beefs include 
London's rental housing crisis (2010) and 
right-wing propaganda (Pamphlets). 

In a time of crippling uncertainty, there’s 
reassurance to be gleaned from that spirit of 
examination, and from the accompanying 
music’s audacity. Squid are considering giving 
away promotional vitamins with Bright Green 





was gripped by a feeling of existential dread, 
as if he’d awoken in a 2020 movie update 


Holly Whitaker 


p 
Ф Ф 


Balmorhea 


ЖЖЖЖ 
The Wind 


DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON. CD/DL/LP 


Texas-based duo’s eighth LP: 


a musical analogue for Otia 
Imperialia, a 13th century 
compendium of miracles. 


Balmorhea’s Rob Lowe and 
Michael A Muller conceived 
The Wind as а return to first 
principles — analogue instru- 
mentals created by improvising 
together in a room, although a 
budget from classical imprint 
Deutsche Grammophon (and 
the run of Nils Frahm's Berlin 
studio) has fleshed out those 
initial Sketches considerably. 
The album title nods to the 
medieval Caesarius of Arles, 
no less, who allegedly trans- 
ported a fertility-enhancing 
sea breeze to desolate places 
‘shut up in a glove’. There's 


86 MOJO 





certainly a fecund quality to 
opener Day Dawns In Your 
Right Eye, its dolorous piano 
chords offset by soaring high 
strings and Lili Cuzor's intimate 
French reading from Otia 
Imperialia. Elsewhere, Rose In 
Abstract ebbs and flows 
between lugubrious pipe 
organ, plaintive piano and 
Clarice Jensen's aching cello 
lines, while The Myth's lattice 
of acoustic guitars become 
swathed in updraughts of 
wordless voices. 

David Sheppard 


Holly Macve 


ххх 
Not The Girl 


MODERN SKY. CD/DL/LP 


Countrified moodiness on 
second LP by South Coast- 
based singer-songwriter. 


Contemplating 
the death of 
her father on 
fifth track 
Daddy's Gone, 
| Brighton- 
dwelling, Irish- born Holly 
Macve sings "...never loved me 
like he should have, | never 
loved him like | could have." 
Frankly recounting the emo- 
tional gymnastics resulting 
from loss, the song is musically 


multitudes, and the full context of this 
55-minute, written-in-one-go long-player 


in keeping with the album's 
downer country vibe up to this 
point. However, after three 
minutes Daddy's Gone shifts 
into a section resonant of the 
Velvet's Heroin. Thereafter, 
Macve's second album edges 
towards the early solo work of 
Mark Lanegan with the epic 
Sweet Marie and, on pulsating 
Who Ат 12, merges grunge 
with country. Guest guitarist 
Bill Ryder-Jones and string 
arranger Fiona Brice add sub- 
tle texture to these brooding 
songs. More widescreen than 
its largely bare-bones prede- 
cessor Golden Eagle, the stately 
Not The Girl refracts Mazzy Star 
through a Bakersfield lens. 
Kieron Tyler 


ШШШ 
Peter Hammill 


ххх 


In Translation 
FIE!. CD/DL/LP 


After over 50 solo LPs, Van 
Der Graaf Generator’s dark 
star releases first covers set. 


An album of 
other people's 


E | songs by this 
spikily indi- 
vidual vocalist 

= was always 


going to mean more than a 





Field. Their ambitious record is, in itself, 


an absolute tonic. 


few Motown retreads. 
And what an intriguingly 
eclectic set of tunes Peter 
Hammill has corralled - there's 
a song by Mahler, Italian pop, 
tango, a weepie from South 
Pacific, and a red-blooded 
assault on Shirley Bassey's 
showstopper I Who Have 
Nothing. His home studio 
arrangements can be skilful: 
Gabriel Fauré's After 
A Dream ends up sounding 
McCartney-ish. The mood 
generally drips Covid-induced 
world weariness - Weimar 
cabaret comes to Wessex. But 
Hammill's voice, well to the fore, 
is not the supple instrument it 
was; to really enjoy this album 
you'll have to forget versions 
of these songs variously inter- 
preted by Frank Sinatra, José 
Carreras, Jessye Norman and 
other stellar voices. Hardcore 
fans will be sold on the pas- 
sion, others may struggle. 
John Bungey 


Sophia Kennedy 
ЖЖЖЖ 


Monsters 
CITY SLANG. CD/DL/LP 


Wide-ranging second from 
US-German singer. 


On the follow-up to her 2017 
self-titled debut, Baltimore- 


born singer Sophia Kennedy 
comes across like a female- 
fronted Animal Collective 
one minute (the bouncing 
Cat On My Tongue), Karen 
Dalton transported onto 
a dancefloor by Giorgio 
Moroder the next (I Can See 
You) or Amy Winehouse 
playing John Carpenter (on 
the nightmarish Francis), all 
without pausing for breath. 
However, rather than making 
Monsters a record unsure of 
its own personality, Kennedy’s 
eclecticism becomes its 
charm. The singer constantly 
pulls down and reassembles 
a backdrop of clattering 
trap beats, woozy electronica, 
sub bass, cosmic jazz and 
lyrics sung in German (she 
was raised in Hamburg) 
on which to project her 
own ever-expanding 
sonic universe. 

Chris Catchpole 








Dinosaur Jr. 
ЖЖЖЖ 


Sweep It Into Space 
JAGJAGUWAR. CD/DL/LP 


It ain’t broke, so Dinosaur Jr. 
don’t fix it on resonant 
twelfth full-length. 


Once asked why he avoided 
Sonic Youth-esque alt tunings, 
J Mascis replied that even 
traditional tunings often left 
him paralysed by choice. 
Certainly, Mascis’s output over 
the last three decades has 
testified to the inexhaustible 
inspiration he’s drawn from his 
ragged, gloriously overdriven 
format. But this monomania 
would only grate if the records 
weren't consistently thrilling, 
and Sweep It Into Space is 
another excellent instalment, 
spiritual offspring Kurt Vile 
proving an unsurprisingly 
sympathetic producer. As ever, 
seemingly gnomic phrases 
are rendered resonant by 
empathetic chord-changes, 
Mascis's worn croak and his 
emotive, primal guitar heroics, 
with | Ain't's repeated “I ain't 
good alone” and Walking To 
You's elegiac tremolo swoops 
particular moving. And Lou 
Barlow's contributions - the 
only real adjustment to 
Mascis’s formula since his 
return to the fold – are both 
keepers, in particular the 
heavy, overcast folk rock of 
closer You Wonder. 

Stevie Chick 


1111111111111111 
Del Amitri 
ЖЖЖЖ 


Fatal Mistakes 
COOKING VINYL. CD/DL/LP 


Glasgow duo return, as 
bleakly catchy ever. 


It takes genu- 
ine guts fora 
band to open 
their first LP in 
nearly 20 years 
with a song 
called You Can't Go Back. Then 











again, self-awareness and 
candour are partly what made 
Del Amitri so rare. Another is 
their flair for amplifying broad 
melodies with charging rock 
chords, fully restored here. 
While frontman/lyricist Justin 
Currie has been releasing 
smart, moving solo albums 
in the interim, they lack the 
group's punch. Reunited with 
guitarist lain Harvie, the music 
swings again, even if Currie's 
damning viewpoint hasn't 
lightened. Witness post-Brexit 
sneer Close Your Eyes And 
Think Of England or the cliché- 
twist of Losing The Will To Die. 
At the same time, the group 
find something fresh in A 
Nation Of Caners, as grunge 
chords and withering words 
find new ways to express bile. 
Jim Farber 





The Black Keys 
ЖЖЖЖ 


Delta Kream 
NONESUCH. CD/DL/LP 


Their early-career blues spark 
is explosively reignited. 


After striking gold with 2010's 
gritty Brothers and 2011's 
ЕМ-рорру El Camino, The Black 
Keys rather lost their way: 
2014's Turn Blue was deflated 
by divorce and pressure; 2019's 
Let’s Rock lacked, amid Dan 
Auerbach's solo/production 
hyperactivity, a vital je-ne-sais- 
quoi. Fortuitous, then, how 
Delta Kream "just happened": 
Auerbach, busy recording with 
two Mississippi blues sidemen 
(RL Burnside's guitar foil Kenny 
Brown and Junior Kimbrough's 
bassist Eric Deaton), called in 
drummer Key Pat Carney to 

rip through tunes that first 
inspired them in the '90s. 

The Ohio duo's mastery of the 
unmathematical Hill Country 
style oozes here from every 
groove, whether on the 
blasting Burnside-favoured 
Coal Black Mattie, or the sexy 
glide of Junior's Walk With 

Me. Their back-to-our-roots arc 
is hardly new, (cf the Stones' 
Blue And Lonesome), but this 


Elephant іп the 
room: Matt Berry. 





music is timeless, alive, and 
about as good as it gets. 
Andrew Perry 


ШШШ 
Van Morrison 


хх 


| atest Record Project 


Volume | 
BMG. CD/DL/LP 


Someone hold his tinfoil 
trilby, he’s going in. 


"Ain't gonna 
moan no 
more,” Van 

ШИ Morrison sang 
Й on 2018's The 
Prophet Speaks, 
and if only it were true. As with 
last year's parade of anti-lock- 
down songs, on Latest Record 
Project Volume 1 the former 
mystic seeker of future enlight- 
enment is now impotently 
throwing empty wine bottles 
at the present. The song titles 
alone tell the story: The Long 
Con; Stop Bitching, Do Some- 
thing; Big Lie; Why Are You On 
Facebook? Plus, 24 (24!) more 
tracks that take a swipe at a 
modern world controlled by 
conspiratorial forces. Blue Funk 
is particularly clunky when 
rhyming its title with "main- 
stream media junk". Even the 
music is largely route-one; soft 
jazz R&B, a pair of comfy slip- 
pers soothing the ideological 
corns on clay feet. Van's 21st 
century output has been 
remarkably potent, and at 75 
he's still trying to find truth, 
but how did such a free thinker 
become so calcified? 

Andy Fyfe 


VAN 
MORRISON 


Tus 





Matt Berry 


KKK 
Blue Elephant 


ACID JAZZ. CD/DL/LP/MC 


The multi-instrumentalist 
and comic actor takes us on 
a mind-blowing journey. 


As befits a fan 
of Mike Old- 
field, Berry 
plays all the 
instruments 
here bar the 
hyperactive drums, courtesy of 
super-sessioner Craig Blundell. 
We have proggy synths, mel- 
lotrons, trebly acid rock guitars, 
Farfisas evoking the pastoralia 
of early Floyd, sinister John 
Barryesque harpsichords, 
wobbly electronics like White 
Noise and generous splashes of 
phasing. Berry also produces 
with an ear to the sonics of 
yesteryear. Summer Sun lifts 
off with a hint of the 
sunshine’n’smog LA pop of 5th 
Dimension, and Blue Elephant 
is imbued with joy and the fun 
of exploration, particularly the 
kaleidoscopic instrumental 
passages. But some vocal sec- 
tions aren't as strong. Although 
Berry strives for a psychedelic 
effect of "disorientation and 
distortion", lyrics like "It's a drag 
to be set on fire/I’ve been 
sacked from the choir/I came 
back to Bedfordshire", deliv- 
ered in his aloof tones, sound 
more arch and detached. 

Mike Barnes 








AMERICANA 


Damien Jurado 
ЖЖЖЖ 
The Monster Who 


Hated Pennsylvania 
MARAQOPA. CD/DL/LP 





Own-label follow-up to last year's What's New, Tomboy. 


"DAMIEN IS back on Twitter, give him a shout!" it says on Jurado's 
website. So MOJO did and it led to a blank page - somehow sadly 
appropriate for an artist who's released consistently good lo-fi 
albums since the mid-'90s and still remains under the radar. 

His 20th album has production that sounds home-made, as 

if he's singing beside you on the sofa while the bass player, 
drummer and peep-y keyboard player are playing in the empty 
attic upstairs. The 10 new songs - slow-to-midtempo folk - are 
about people, most of them broken (the man who lost his soul in 
warm opener Helena; the man without the courage or the shoes 
to walk away in Johnny Caravella). Though it's not without hope. 
"Time we let go,” Jurado's echoey voice sings in closer Male 
Customer £1, one of many highlights, that include Hiding Ghosts 
and the empty, beautiful Minnesota. 


ALSO RELEASED 


Shannon McNally 
ЖЖЖЖ 






The Waylon Sessions 
BLUE ROSE/COMPASS. CD/DL/LP 
EE On this gem of an 
| album, McNally's 
| covers of the late 
| outlaw country star 
^  feelas much a 
tribute to Waylon Jennings' 
attitude and independent spirit 
as to his music. McNally, like 
Jennings, has no trouble 


inhabiting someone else's songs. 


She's equally convincing on the 
tough ‘manly’ material (doesn't 
even change the gender on I'm A 
Ramblin' Man) as on the tender 
ones (You Asked Me To). And the 
band - including Buddy Miller, 
Rodney Crowell, Lukas Nelson, 
Jessi Colter - is brilliant. 


XIXA 
ЖЖЖЖ 


Genesis 
JULLIAN. CD/DL/LP 


A newish offshoot 
of the Tucson 
Americana scene 
(this is their second 
full album), XIXA's 
sound is a mysterious mix of 
Arizona desert rock and 
psychedelic Peruvian cumbia, 
with propulsive drums, heavy 
guitars, dreamy vocals and a big 
dash of prog. There are traces of 
their Arizona forefathers Giant 
Sand in closing song Feast Of 
Ascension, and of an edgier, 
more out-there Calexico in the 
soundtrack-like instrumental 
breaks (May They Call Us Home). 
A unique, addictive album. 


Chris Richards 
ЖЖЖЖ 


Wisconsin River 
WHITE MARE. CD/DL/LP 

apices s Back in his child- 
at) hood home of 
ЖШ we) Sheboygan, 

=| Wisconsin during 

== lockdown, Richards 
started exploring the characters 
and history that make up the 11 
songs on his fine sixth album. 
Richards’ voice has the warmth 
and honesty to carry the songs 
alone, though sometimes there’s 
a light touch of harmonica, 
mandolin, fiddle or (on Moon 
Over Michigan) tender backing 
vocals. Other highlights: Don’t 
Let Me Die In Tennessee and 
opener Sawdust Town, the true 
tale of a lethal local firestorm. 


David Huckfelt 
ЖЖЖЖ 


Room Enough, 
Time Enough 
FLUFF & GRAVY. CD/DL/LP 


Haunted landscapes 
and spirits are all 
over the ex-The 
Pines leader's 

a second solo LP, as in 
the old American songs he covers 
along with new originals. Bury Me 
Not On The Lone Prairie, sung like 
a field recording, doesn't stick to 
the cowboy myth but adds 
indigenous people into the story. 
Among the guests are various 
Native American musicians, as on 
a fascinating cover of Patti Smith's 
Ghost Dance; A Satisfied Mind is a 
lovely duet with Greg Brown. SS 









MOJO 87 


FILTER ALBUMS | 


Truth drawn 
from tragedy: 
Natalie Bergman 
spells it out. 






Tomahawk 


ЖЖЖ 


Tonic Immobility 
IPECAC. CD/DL/LP 


Mike Patton's underground 
supergroup celebrate 20th 
anniversary with fifth LP. 


Within the 
| spectrum of 
а Mike Patton's 
‚ output - from 
the scabrous 
mutant-rock 
of Faith No More, through the 
baroque pop of Fantomas, 
to the acid pastiches of Mr 
Bungle - Tomahawk have 
vented his bile as bluntly as 
possible. Also numbering 
Jesus Lizard guitarist Duane 
Denison and Battles/Helmet 
drummer John Stanier, their 
first new album in eight years is 
a characteristically unfriendly 
thing, rhythmically terse and 
bristling with ultraviolence. 
There's precious little subtlety, 
but plenty of brutish hooks, 
and Tonic Immobility is often 
satisfyingly brawny fun. Busi- 
ness Casual, a sledgehammer 
satire railing at a "goose-step- 
ping" “whiskey-dick” “mafia 
man", perfectly marries the 
sinister prowl of classic Jesus 
Lizard with Patton’s theatrical 
venom, while Predators And 
Scavengers evokes the helter- 
skelter hurtle of late-period 
Black Flag. Patton’s ever-pre- 
sent appreciation for the 
absurd lends an acerbic edge, 
leavening his group’s wall-to- 
wall mélée. 





created after Bergman, 
a member of Chicago’s 
Beck-approved Wild 
Belle alongside her 
brother Elliot, lost her 
father and stepmother in a car 
accident. Conceived while on silent 
monastic retreat, it’s bathed in 
sacred sounds and imagery, Bergman 
drawing up songs from a well of 
gospel, soul and religious music. Yet 
despite its foundations in faith, Mercy 
doesn’t quite feel rock-solid. 


Bergman’s off-beam 
voice hits the same 
indefinable receptors 
as Joanna Newsom or 

= Amy Winehouse, while 
Sweet Mary’s thrift-store Lesley 
Gore or the Sunday School Graceland 
of I Will Praise You suggest that odd 
spiritual channel-hopping that often 
defines outsider art. A little strange, 
a little strained, Mercy still rings with 
its own truth. 


Natalie Bergman 


ЖЖЖЖ 
Мегсу 


THIRD MAN. CD/DL/LP 


Gospel-inspired response to grief 
from Wild Belle's singer. 


LOWE, Е а heres, 
redemption: the guiding themes of 
Natalie Bergman's solo debut might 
seem reassuring, but they were 


triggered by tragedy. Mercy was 


Stevie Chick 
MINI 


Victoria Segal 


Damon Locks & 
Black Monument 
Ensemble 


ЖЖЖЖ 
NOW 


INTERNATIONAL ANTHEM. CD/DL/LP 


Inspirational Afro-futurist 
jazz, from a Chicago garden. 


It's quite a 
record that can 
T simultaneously 
conjure the 

! spirits of both 
Duke Ellington 
and Public Enemy, but this 
second album by the Chicago 
collective certainly pulls it off. 
Locks is a sound collagist and 
composer who combines 
widescreen jazz swing with a 
dense beats-and-samples 
fusillade recalling PE producers 
The Bomb Squad. Add in hyp- 
notic vocal chants, new jazz 
stars Angel Bat Dawid (clarinet) 
and Ben LaMar Gay (cornet) in 
rapturous form, an imperative 
to emerge from the horrors of 
2020 with fierce new purpose, 
and a garden full of cicadas to 
add the frisson of field record- 
ing, and NOW is a pretty intense 
31 minutes. But while Locks and 
со’5 intent is radical, it's never 
forbidding. Instead, a punchy 
accessibility informs even their 
wildest excursions: an inspiring 
post-hip-hop, BLM era update 
of the Afro-futurist jazz of Phil 
Cohran and Horace Tapscott. 
John Mulvey 





88 MOJO 


Leon Vynehall 
ЖЖЖЖ 


Rare, Forever 
NINJA TUNE. CD/DL/LP 


Eclectic dancefloor 
experimentalist finds 
time for self-reflection. 


Much of 
Sussex-born 
producer and 
DJ Vynehall's 
music has 
focused on 
family. His mother's in-car 
mixtapes inspired his break- 
through EP, while his haunting 
2018 debut album, Nothing Is 
Still, wove the story of his 
grandparents' emigration to 
1960s USA. But our current 
collective narrative has 
allowed Vynehall to focus on 
himself. Rare, Forever has its 
feet on the dancefloor. Rich, 
dreamlike house grooves 
(Snakeskin со Has-Been) threaten 
to combust but hold something 
back; doleful, beat-free walls 
of sound (An Exhale) are mov- 
ing, before icy drone adds a 
sinister edge (Farewell! Mag- 
nus Gabbro). Evidence of 
Vynehall's polymathic musical 
approach - recent production 
gigs include working in drill 
and experimental pop - 
abounds in the loping skank 
meets jazzy minimalism of 
Alichea Vella Amor. In all, Rare, 
Forever's prevailing mood is 
sensuous and luxurious. 
Stephen Worthy 





Microcorps 


KKK 
XMIT 


ALTER. DL/LP 


Alexander Tucker's latest: 
digital tumult, disembodied 
voices, unsettling, alluring. 


The idea of 
electronic 
music artists 
giving life, 
conceptually 

| and artistically, 
to a humanoid is nothing new, 
as a certain Mr Numan will 
attest. But the results rarely 
sound as nightmarish and 
overpowering as those forged 
by Microcorps' Alex Tucker. 

A veteran of over 20 years asa 
solo artist in his many incarna- 
tions, Tucker's MO here con- 
sists of skittish, hyperspeed 
beats and vocals smudged and 
twisted to the point of disfig- 
urement. Voices have shape 
but rarely definition. The 
closest to a traditional take is 
Gazelle Twin's contribution on 
the disturbing, polyrhythmic 
lost horror movie theme of 
XEM. Stretched and unnatu- 
rally slowed, yes, but discern- 
ible. By contrast, Tucker's own 
voice flits between childlike 
and guttural roar on DOR, fed 
by a tempo akin to Burundi 
drummers at warp factor 10. 
The atmosphere may be 
oppressive, but the mood 
generated is seductive. 
Stephen Worthy 





Paul Weller 


ЖЖЖЖ 
Fat Pop (Volume 1) 


POLYDOR. CD/DL/LP 


Lockdown album emerges 
just 12 months after the 
Modfather's last. Ker-pow! 


r3 Paul Weller's 
astonishing 
recent work- 
rate – four 
albums in as 
many years 
— would not seem quite so 
extraordinary were it not 
for the fact that the quality 
control has never once 
wobbled. Fat Pop (Volume 1), 
conceived and written mid- 
Covid clampdown, suggests 
Weller's ability to write fizzing 
pop tunes, slinky soul anthems 
and weird dub-electronica 
hybridisations is inexhaustible. 
This 12-tracker doesn't feel 
as 'big' as 2020's funky On 
Sunset, nor as even as the 
woody True Meanings, but the 
array of styles means no one 
will walk away untouched. 
Opener Cosmic Fringes is the 
clipped, post-punk attack dog, 
complementing the title track's 
moody dub-funk; Shades Of 
Blue, True and Failed are 
conventional old-school 
nuggets; Testify is a swampy 
night tripper; and That Pleas- 
ure the grooving disco jewel. 
Plus much more. Roll on 
Volume 2 in 2022... 

Pat Gilbert 





Will Stratton 


KKKK 
The Changing 
Wilderness 


BELLA UNION. CD/DL/LP 


Acoustic state-of-the-world 
ruminations on singer/ 
songwriter’s seventh. 


Having over 
the past 13 
years sought 
to locate а 
stylistic mid- 
point some- 
where between Jackson 
Browne and Nick Drake, New 
York state's Will Stratton has 
developed a musical character 
pretty much all his own. There 
are also echoes of more mod- 
ern kindred musical souls such 
as Steve Gunn and Fionn 
Regan, and if Stratton previ- 
ously tended lyrically towards 
the introspective - under- 
standably, when writing about 
overcoming cancer on 2014's 
Gray Lodge Wisdom - here he 
turns his gaze outwards. 
Sometimes directly, but more 
often elliptically, he takes on 
modern fascism in the coolly 
angry Black Hole and sketches 
immigrant families torn apart 
on the gently brooding Infer- 
tile Air. Meanwhile, Stratton's 
enduring love for Bryter Layter 
surfaces again amid the rip- 
pling acoustic guitar patterns 
of Fate's Ghost, on an album 
that sustains a beautiful 
atmosphere throughout. 

Tom Doyle 





Lars Opstad 





an Pl oer РИ MEAN 








Speace 
ЖЖЖЖ 
There Used То Ве 


Ногѕеѕ Неге 
PROPER. CD/DL/LP 


Raw emotions hit the spot for 
Americana singer-songwriter. 


An album about losing your 
father is never going to bea 
chucklefest but, as Nashville- 
based Amy Speace proves, 
neither does it have to be 
maudlin. After an ambivalent 
relationship, Speace and her 
emotionally distant father 
finally became close in his last 
years, and in his final weeks 
the memories poured out. 
Memories of being driven in 
a Pontiac convertible by his 
sister's boyfriend, of a cabin in 
the woods, of dreaming his 
twin was about die: all this 
runs through Speace's deeply 
personal songs, but in a code 
universal enough for everyone 
to relate to. When not remi- 
niscing about dad, Speace 
delves into her own memories, 
often from the perspective of 
being a new mother - the 
circle of life never ending. Raw 
and heartbreaking in parts, yet 
always kind and gentle, this is 
an album of hope to get you 
through the hardest times. 
Andy Fyfe 


Robert Finley 
ЖЖЖЖ 


Sharecropper's Son 
EASY EYE SOUND. CD/DL/LP 


Satisfying third from the 
66-year-old bluesman from 
Winnsboro, Louisiana. 


Producer Dan 
Auerbach 
keeps it pleas- 
ingly simple on 
the second 
album he has 
recorded with Robert Finley, 
foregrounding the bluesman’s 
expressive vocal - from gruff 
tenor to soulful falsetto — over 


КЕБЕЙ TIAL 


p 


Robert Finley: E 


proving емегу- № 
one wrong. А 





10 songs, mainly autobio- 
graphical, including two ad- 
libbed live in the studio. With 
Finley is a top-notch band - 
guitarist Kenny Brown and 
bassist Eric Deaton who 
previously played with Junior 
Kimbrough and RL Burnside; 
Memphis Boys Bobby Wood 
and Gene Chrisman on key- 
boards and drums respectively 
- keeping the heat turned up 
high. Make Me Feel Alright is a 
joyous call and response; 
Souled Out On You a heart- 
breaker with deep feeling; 
Country Child, meanwhile, is 
pure Hill Country hypnotic 
boogie. "Always had old folks 
saying that boy ain't gonna 
be no good,” Finley sings on 
that song. They couldn't have 
been more mistaken. 

Lois Wilson 


Anthony Joseph 


ЖЖЖЖ 
The Rich Are 
Only Defeated 
When Running 


For Their Lives 
HEAVENLY SWEETNESS. CD/DL/LP 


Absorbing eighth album by 
poet, musician and author. 


Here, Joseph 
explores what 
it means to be 
British Trini- 
dadian, identi- 
fying his post- 
Windrush generational voice 
through a celebration of the 
Caribbean diaspora, the unify- 
ing thread through much of 
his work. The album's legend is 
taken from the Trinidadian 
writer and social activist 

CLR James's 1938 book on the 
Haitian revolution, The Black 
Jacobins. Two of the key tracks, 
Kamau and Language (Poem 
For Anthony McNeill), pay 
homage to the Barbadian and 
Jamaican poets of their respec- 
tive titles. The former is a 
praise song and syncopated 
jazz dance, centred around 
Shabaka Hutchings' spiralling 
bass clarinet (other band 
members include such noted 
jazzmen as Jason Yarde, who 
also produces and arranges, 
Colin Webster and Denys Bap- 
tiste). The latter, meanwhile, 
summons sacred spirits 
through its 10-minute-plus 
enlightenment groove. 

Lois Wilson 





Various 


ЖЖЖ 
PRSNT 


MODERN OBSCURE MUSIC. DL/LP 


Brisk compilation that 
questions how we engage 
with music. 


Based on an 
academic 
study showing 
that a third 

е of all digital 

listeners skip 
to a new track within 30 sec- 
onds, Barcelona label Modern 
Obscure Music challenged 
12 of the world's most 
experimental artists to create 
contained pieces no longer 
than 32 seconds. The carefully 
sequenced result is a fleeting 
joy. Ranging from the spoken 
word ambience of Visible 
Cloaks to the languid fretless 
bass and austere atmospherics 
of Nicolas Godin & Pierre 
Rousseau, only Ryuichi 
Sakamoto's decision to play 
the silent John Cage card 
disappoints. While the biggest 
surprises come in Frank Ocean 
collaborator Chassol's 
contained jazz-funk symphony 
and Lafawndah's slippery mix 
of brutalist beats and bad 
disco, Pascal Comelade shows 
vintage class, simulating a 
hospital's ECG. PRSNT may 
be shorter than Sympathy 
For The Devil or Paranoid 
Android, but it's packed with 
compelling thrills. 
Andy Cowan 


William The 
Conqueror 


ЖЖЖЖ 


Maverick Thinker 
CHRYSALIS. CD/DL/LP 


Final part of Ruarri Joseph’s 
epic autobiographical 
triptych. 


Three is clearly 
William The 
Conqueror's 
magic number. 
The third 

| 4 album in a 
loose trilogy, Maverick Thinker 
is also the Cornish three- 
piece's third album in just over 
three years. While central 
Conqueror Ruarri Joseph 
awaits publication of his 
debut novel, Maverick Thinker 
brings us up to date on his 

life and times. Now distanced 
from the electrified 
Americana that encased 
2018's Proud Disturber Of The 
Peace, the trio of Joseph, 
bassist Naomi Holmes and 
drummer Harry Harding have 
hit on a deeply grooved 
talking swamp-grunge blues. 
Scrutinising his suitability 

as an adult and glancing at 
mortality, Joseph's half- 
spoken lyrics glide across 
slinking rhythms and fuzzy, 
fizzing guitar, interspersed 

by the likes of Quiet Life's 
seabreeze piano melody. 
Maverick Thinker draws the 
listener into a very personal 
world and rewards them with 
enlightenment. 






Andy Fyfe 








Toumani Diabate And Р Р 
F +: i 9 
The London NL 
R aa چو‎ ДЖ 
Symphony Orchestra ng RR. ASi 


ЖЖЖЖ 
Kórólén 
WORLD CIRCUIT. CD/DL/LP 


Malian superstar investigates his mystical side with added 
strings, on music "older than Bach". 


A CLASH of two worlds, perhaps - the Malian kora master and a 
band of improvising griots meet 30 members of one of the finest 
western classical orchestras - but there is no doubting their 
empathy as the performers seek connections. The logistics must 
have been daunting: "Everyone has different dreams, so everybody 
plays the pieces differently," says Diabaté. The whole enterprise 
could have collapsed at any moment, so credit to conductor Clark 
Rundell, a veteran of jazz sessions, and arrangers lan Gardiner 
(the classical musicians upfront and adapting to the West African 
mood swings) and Nico Muhly (giving the musicians space and 
adding cues for Diabaté to extemporise around). Recorded at 
London's Barbican in 2008, but timeless in every other aspect. 


ALSO RELEASED 


Khalab & M'Berra 
Ensemble 


ЖЖЖЖ 
M'berra 
REAL WORLD. CD/DL/LP 


Afro-futurism 
recorded in the 

| M'berra refugee 
camp in Mauritania, 
| =) captured by 

Italian producer Khalab, using 
traditional instruments, electric 
guitars and electronics. It's an 
intense listen (start with Reste 

À L'Ombre and Moulan Shakur) 
with trance, deep house and 
hardcore electro, but the 
Africans - among them some 
fairly big names, including Disco 
of Tartit - hold their own against 
the onslaught. 






Crimi 
KKK 
Luci E Gual 


AIRFONO. CD/DL/LP 


Folk (Sicilian), funk 
(New Orleans) and 
- rai (Algerian) 
combine to produce 
| a perfectly punk 
blend in the hands of jazzers 
(French) who realised they can't 
simply (or convincingly) play 
the old way and rewrote the 
rules with impunity. There's 

a hint of Rachid Taha in their 
fearless pilfering, though leader 
Julien Lesuisse, who sings 

and plays sax, comes across 

as more refined. 


Altin Gün 


ххх 
Yol 
GLITTERBEAT. CD/DL/LP 


E Third outing fora 

| Netherlands-based 
Г" band too often 

_ 4 lazily lumped in 

L4 with their Turkish 

psych heroes, when their fearless 

brand pure of pure pop is here 

far closer to The Human League 

than Baris Manço. Yüce Dag 

Basinda is a catchy single, 

but it fits perfectly among 

the percussion, synths 

and omnichords, suggesting 

the sextet have now found 

their niche. 






Antonis 
Antoniou 


ххх 


Klisméttin 
АЛАВИ!. CD/DL/LP 


Using as percussion 
the barricades 

that divide his 
hometown (Nicosia) 
between Greek and 
Turkish zones in Cyprus, 
Antoniou creates an edgy, 
duende-filled mélange of 
shadows and spectres, recorded 
as lockdown magnified the lack 
of freedoms with which he and 
his fellow citizens live. Lute, 
synths, concrete-filled barrels 
and ghosts make an unnerving 
sound, the future looking over 
its Shoulder. DH 





MOJO 89 


FILTER ALBUMS EXTRA 








uL» Vr ҸӘ 


fale duda 
ANTI-. CD/DL/LP 


A real sense of progression on 
this self-taught British jazz 
pianist's fourth LP, packed with 
skittering genre fusions (folk, 
rock, hip-hop), Rhodes and 
Johnny Woodham's trumpet. 
A melancholic air pervades 
Mist's untutored playing and 
soul-searching raps. AC 





- Em Et 
Loin ^u ze 


ш ated А И 


Migne Beats 


Outlaw R&B 


FUZZ CLUB. CD/LP/MC 


Peripatetic Texan Danny Lee 
Blackwell's fourth LP of psych 
rock thrills was sun-baked in 
California. While not short on 
garage freakouts (Revolution; 
Crypt) there's added twang to 
Hell In Texas and a spaghetti 
western shimmer on New 
Day's unheavenly chorus. JB 


ВАНО OF HOLY JOY 


— or Holy Joy 


“ӯ p 


< PF PF 


ueni ile Flight 


TINY GLOBAL PRODUCTIONS. CD/DL/LP 


Having perfected their 
existential beat-soul, BOHJ's 
third wave uses its heady 
textures to cast a caustic gaze 
at modern life. Optimism 
ultimately wins out, trumpet- 
flushed standout That Magic 
Thing forcefully concluding: 
“Love is a healing force.” AC 





Graham Costello 
& STRATA 





< À x d 
d P 2 D 


Second Ties 
GEARBOX. CD/DL/LP 


Costello corrals new blood 
on Glasgow's jazz scene into 
a dynamic set, building on 
his drum pulse and Fergus 
McCreadie's piano figures. 
Punchy brass and squalling 
guitars give a wild 
improvisational edge. AC 


Current Joys 





а ee 
PA KK 


о о 

SECRETLY CANADIAN. CD/DL/LP 
American Honey, Dancer In 
The Dark, Big Star: song titles 
suggest a plaid-shirted 
classicism that Nevada's Nick 
Rattigan more than makes 
good on with aerated guitars, 
melodies, orchestral 
crescendos and heartsore 
vocals. Satisfyingly brash. JB 





No-No Boy 








SMITHSONIAN FOLKWAYS. CD/DL/LP 


Vietnamese American Julian 
Saporiti explores the 1975 fall 
of Saigon via his family history. 
Twelve thoughtful indie-folk 
songs use sampled field 
recordings to trace a line from 
WWII internment camps to 
contemporary immigration 
centres and refugee camps. JB 


Nick Powell 


Walls Fal [Down 


FURCAT. DL 


Formerly of Strangelove, now a 
composer for theatre, film and 
TV, Powell's assured solo debut 
ranges from taut, post-punk 
dance (Feels Like Dancing) to 
tastefully melancholic pop 
(Elbow-ish Dust) that has all 
the moves but retains its 
composure. CP 





г 


Esther Rose 


À | v 
ч XK У <. UK 


How Many Times 
FULL TIME HOBBY. CD/DL/LP 


New Orleans country 
classicist's third sounds very 
jolly for a break-up LP. 
Although unflinchingly 
honest, she looks for lessons to 
learn rather than bridges 
burned. Like her hero Hank 
Williams, Rose's songwriting 
revels in its directness. AF 





=F Bruce Springsteen: 
| , upstaged Бу Obama’s 
Amazing Grace. 


=e 





to play air guitar aboard Air Force One, through to 








p UD Vr WP 


I pra 


MAIS UM. CD/DL/LP 


Beijing producer and Snoop 
Lion remixer continues his 
singular path with a heady 
collision of folk and modernity: 
woodwind and Buchla 
experiments meet ceremonial 
Taoist music, footwork and 
grime, peaking on closer The 
Door Of Aspiration. AC 








Roy's Garage 

IDÉE FIX. DL/LP 

Patrick Lefler doesn't stint on 
smartly orchestrated psych. 
Whether it's the blissed-out 
baroque of As Long As You're 
Feeling or cartoonish self- 
analysis of Where Did My Mind 
Go?, his inward-looking pop 
has shades of The Beach Boys 
and 13th Floor Elevators. AC 





Teke: Teke 


habei 


KILL ROCK STARS. CD/DL/LP 


From a tribute act to Japanese 
surf guitarist Takeshi 'Terry' 
Terauchi grew this Montreal 
septet. Their musical round- 
trip takes in Brazilian psych, 
Bulgarian folk, celestial chimes 
and flute-playing lavish 
enough for fans of Amon Düül 
II's headshop tribal rituals. JB 





Renesudes: Born In The USA 


SPOTIFY PODCAST 


THE POINT where music and politics intersect is 
where musicians will generally only want to talk about 
politics, and politicians about music. As such, Grace: 
American Music, the third episode of a conversational 
summit between former President Barack Obama and 
long-term statesman Bruce Springsteen, is initially 
dominated by Obama. The first album he bought was 
Stevie Wonder's Talking Book, Court And Spark changed 
his life, he's not wild about heavy metal but he did like 


music nights at the White House where he and Michelle 
helped conceive Bruce's Broadway show. Thereafter, we 


yn Flowers 





microdose Springsteen's autobiography, Born To Run: К У 
n. Lo she By Day 
TOUGH LOVE. CD/DL/LP 


The Preston duo weave a warp 
of Ghost Box’s spooky synths 
and artistic Gestalt with a weft 
of Kevin Shields’ heavily felted 
drone and fade. Meanwhile, 
both the production and Katie 
Drew’s vocals have a Cocteaus- 
ish, soindle-pricked magic 
about them. JB 


from learning to play honky tonk to Dylan, Woody 





Guthrie and the path to transcendence via life-changing 
stage shows (“it’s not really a joke, that is my purpose at 
night”). It’s not until Obama recounts the eulogy for 
Rev. Clementa Pinckney in South Carolina, where he 
sang Amazing Grace from the pulpit, that Bruce is 
finally — willingly — upstaged. ] В 


90 MOJO 








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FILTER REISSUES 








Camera Press/Steve Double 


Phasers to stun 





A spacerock masterpiece is readied for relaunch. John Mulvey celebrates 
the return of the original Major Lazer. 


Spiritualized " 


ЖЖЖЖ 


| azer Guided Melodies Ж & 


FAT POSSUM. LP 


GGY POP'S Lust For Life. Chuck Berry's San 
| Francisco Dues. The Soul Album by Otis Redding. 

Soul Dressing by Booker T. & The M.G.’s. And, less i 
edifyingly, Lie: The Love And Terror Cult, the album 
released while Charles Manson was awaiting trial 
for the Tate-LaBianca murders. These were the 
five records the members of Spiritualized used to 
obscure their faces at an NME photo shoot in July 
1992. Their desire to be seen as historic, soulful, 
transgressive, at an elevated remove from their 
British contemporaries, was almost touchingly 
needy. “The whole of what people tag ‘indie’ is the 
biggest mainstream going, and nobody seems to 
want to work outside of that," the band's leader, 
Jason Pierce, told me in the accompanying cover 
story. “It’s not hard to produce something tonally 
avant-garde. But people are scared to explore 
themselves and the music they can create." 

Pierce, in contrast, was fearless, vitalised by the diverse, 
nourishing sounds he loved. Four months earlier, Spiritualized had 
released their debut album, Lazer Guided Melodies, a double where 
the 12 pieces were arranged into four “movements” (original 
pressings of the CD enforced the concept by programming them 
into four tracks; no skipping allowed). The music was audacious, but 
not forbidding: Stooges primitivism rearranged by Brian Wilson; 
gospel supplications ringing out amidst the ambient drones of 
LaMonte Young's Dream House; minimalist strategies played out 
with maximalist flourishes. In a Rugby 
studio normally used for advertising jingles, 
Pierce and his band-mates engineered a 
porthole to the cosmos. 

When work began on Lazer Guided 
Melodies in late 1990, however, Spiritualized's 
ascent was far from guaranteed. Pierce had 
done half of the creative heavy lifting in 
Spacemen 3, but shyly, discreetly. Peter 
‘Sonic Boom’ Kember, another obsessive 
music head born on the same day as Pierce 
in November 1965, had been the band’s 
chief spokesman, a polemicist for mind- 
altering experiences with a draconian 
focus on minimalism. By the time the final 
Spacemen 3 album, Recurring, was released 
in February 1991, Pierce and the other 
members of Spacemen 3 had wearied of 
Kember’s unflinchingly reductive vision, 
and already branched out into Spiritualized. 

At first, their new project moved 
tentatively: a debut single saw the band 








BACK STORY: 
PURER PHASE 
ө Few late 20th century 
bands are more suited 
to a meticulous overhaul 
of their back catalogue 
than Spiritualized: the 
neuroticattention to 
sonic details, elaborate 
packaging, cratedigger 
reference points and 
often sketchy nature of 
‘90s vinyl making them 
prime candidates for the 
full treatment. Hence 
Lazer Guided Melodies 
Will be followed shortly 
by reissues of Pure Phase 
(1995), Ladies And 





Gentlemen We Are . . 
Floating In Space (1997) applying a modish, baggy lope to The 
and Let It Come Down Troggs’ Anyway That You Want Me. But the 


(2001) as 180g double 
albums, mastered from 
half-speed lacquer cuts 
and in gatefold sleeves. 
White vinyl, too, asa 
further limited edition. 


real Spiritualized sound had actually been 
prototyped on Hypnotized, a 1989 
Spacemen 3 single, where the band’s zoned- 
out extrapolations of psychedelia had been 
augmented with layers of horns, feedback 





92 MOJO 


“Someone 
said that God 
was playing 
feedback 


behind the 


curtain. ” 
JASON PIERCE 





and chimes, imbuing the slight melody with a vast, 
ethereal shimmer. It was a template expanded upon 
further for Lazer Guided Melodies. “This was not 
music of great complexity in terms of chords and 
key changes,” wrote bassist Will Carruthers in his 


у) memoir, Playing The Bass With Three Left Hands. 
i “The beauty of the creation lay in what was wound 
ЫЧ around the simple structures." 


In Rugby's VHF Studios, near the flat Pierce 
shared with keyboardist Kate Radley, the band 
worked innovatively and collaboratively. The melody 
of Step Into The Breeze might have had similarities 
with an old Spacemen 3 song like So Hot, but its 
orchestrated heft and phased disorientations were a 
strikingly richer experience. At the time, Pierce was 
evasive about the process. “A lot of the sounds we 
create aren’t being played,” he told me. “I can hear 
vocal harmonies and string sections on there that 
were never recorded. Someone said that God was 
playing feedback behind the curtain.” Today, he is 
more forthcoming. “VHF Studios possessed a home 
electronics phaser/sampler unit that I believe was 
built from a mail order kit,” he says. “The quality of 
the sampling wasn’t great, but the phase setting was 
incredible. I've yet to find anything since that runs as deep and as 
slow as this thing did. It's all over the first two albums." 

The sessions were cheap, too — Pierce estimates Lazer Guided 
Melodies was recorded for £3,000 — but, like so many of his 
subsequent records, its languid, lavish atmosphere took a good 
while longer to finesse. Pierce decamped to Battery Studios 
in London for mixing and to “explore a more professional way 
of making music", emerging with an album whose filigreed 
sophistication and classic resonances were mostly a world away 
from the indie rock he so disdained. The building blocks were 
modest, but the scale was monumental. In just over seven minutes, 
Shine A Light blew up a whispered gospel invocation into a 
glimmering sprawl akin to Pink Floyd's Echoes, then ramped 
up the intensity with saxophone firestorms and a scree of guitar 
noise worthy of Sonny Sharrock. Like the MC5 before them, 
Spiritualized had worked out how garage rock and spiritual jazz, 
twin incendiaries, could come together. 

In the midst of all this, the lyrics sometimes felt like an after- 
thought, even clunky: *Gonna take control, I'm gonna free my 
will/I'm gonna swallow it whole like some giant new pill,” ran 
I Want You, the album's surging, relatively orthodox indie hit. 
And while Pierce's crafty elision of love, religion and drug rhetoric 
was most extravagantly realised on 1997s Ladies And Gentlemen 
We Are Floating In Space, he was already betraying a taste for 
wordplay that could verge on the cornball. “I’m losing all my 
thoughts in 200 bars,” he sang оп the final track, conflating 
chemical with musical obliteration, as Radley counted off the 
song's bars from one to 200. 

Run, though, embedded Pierce's finest conceit in its DNA, 
taking direct inspiration from both JJ Cale's Call Me The Breeze 
and the John Cale-era Velvet Underground's Run Run Run. If 
much of Lazer Guided Melodies heard secret harmonies in disparate 
musics — that reverberant sweet spot between Fun House and fet 
Sounds — Run pinpointed the common heartbeat, too. Drone rock 
ramalam, blues-adjacent choogle, what Neu! called the “Endlese 
Gerade" (endless line) of motorik; they all fed into its streamlined 
pulse. It drove Lazer Guided Melodies out from a shared repository 
of great records, and towards Spiritualized's future — one that, 
soon enough, would be every bit as transcendental. 














Just a phase: 
Jason Pierce 
in spiritual 
orbit, 1992. 





= 
" 


= 


Various 


Get On Board The Soul 
Train: The Sound Of 
Philadelphia International 
Hecords Volume | 


UNITED SOULS. 


MARKING THE 50th anniversary of 
Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff’s 
Philadelphia International Records, these 
eight albums from 1971-73, their earliest 
years, remastered from original tapes, 
shine a light on forgotten corners of the 
influential "70s label’s past. 

Gamble & Huff had been trying to get 
a new label off the ground for some years. 
In fact, the epitome of an early Philly soul 
group, [he Intruders had been recordin 
US R&B hits on the Gamble label since 
1966 — Cowboys To Girls was a Number 
| in '68 — so it's no surprise that Save 
Ihe Children is full of highs, from the 
Gil Scott-Heron title track to UK hit ГИ 
Always Love My Mama. 

The two best-known albums from 
those first years — The O"Jays' Back 
Stabbers and Harold Melvin & The Blues 
Notes’ I Miss You — have 
lasted thanks to memorable 
lead vocals and classic songs. |W Ш 
On the former, Love Train, г 
992 Arguments, Sunshine, 


the title track (which also rd BUB ENS ш 
comes as a bonus 12-inch) Af | i | 


94 МО)О 


Tickets please 


Philly fellas: Harold 
Melvin & The Blues 
Notes with Teddy 
Pendergrass (far left) 
suited, not yet booted. 





and more; on the latter, former drummer 
Teddy Pendergrass’s storming takeover of 
the quintet as heard on long takes of 
Yesterday I Had The Blues, Be For Real 
and the title track, while US R&B 
Number 1 If You Don’t Know Me By 
Now benefits from its relative brevity. 

Volume 1 also boasts three albums b 
Paul Williams, AKA jazz singer Billy Paul 
— Ebony Woman (first out on Neptune in 
1970, it features a bonkers Everyday 
People), the underrated Going East (the 
first-ever PIR release), and 360 Degrees 
Of... (the one with Me And Mrs Jones) 
which was boosted by trademark Gamble 
& Huff social comment in Am I Black 
Enough For You?, the pride of Brown 
Baby, and I’m Just A Prisoner’s drama 
and quiet anger at injustice. 

The instrumental force behind these 
exceptional voices, MFSB, was the label’s 
very own Funk Brothers and M.G.’s. 1973 
debut MFSB featured zippily orchestrated 
covers of Superfly track Freddie's Dead, 
Sly Stone's Family Affair, and Philly staples 
like Back Stabbers, housed in an arresting 
sleeve — huge needle in a plush coffin, 





surrounded by poppies, in a graveyard. 
But the biggest surprise here will be 
Dick Jensen. A Hawaiian soul brother of 
some dynamism, think James Brown, Joe 
Tex and Jackie Wilson, his only PIR album, 
last reissued in 2013, is a brave mix of big 
Philly arrangements, his 
ballad-favouring voice strong 


E ! oh on New York City's A Lonely 


Town and uptempo I Don't 
Want To Cry. He sounds 
like the producers' dry run 
for Lou Rawls’ hits to come. 















Brown Sugar 
Featuring 
Clydie King 


Brown Sugar Featuring 
Clydie King 


DEMON. 





EN Brown Sugar 
У - not the lovers 
' rock trio – was 

a solo vehicle 
for Clydie King 
Lum ‚ inall but name 
which produced just one 
long-player on the Chelsea 
Records label in 1973. It turned 
out to be a very busy year for 
the Dallas-born singer, who 

as a member of the go-to 

trio of session singers The 
Blackberries was working 

with Humble Pie and Pink 
Floyd and had just finished 

a still-unissued project for 
Motown. Indeed, Motown 
should have been the perfect 
fit for King; her sweet, raspy 
Diana Ross-like vocal on this 
album is a pure delight, 
captured best on the exquisite 
Loneliness and Didn't |, two 

of the three singles the 

record yielded. The third, 

a cover of Dance To The 

Music, revealed a tougher, 
more gospel-rooted edge 

to her craft. 








Lois Wilson 


Gary Moore 


oar Bite Can 
You Get 


PROVOGUE. 


| Fusion, rock, 
EF jazzand, of 

|| course, the 
, blues- 
Belfast's great 
guitar virtu- 
oso could do it all, but it was 
his quicksilver songwriting- 
relationship with Thin Lizzy's 
Phil Lynott that shone the 
brightest. Largely paying jaw- 
dropping homage to blues 
luminaries such as Freddie 
King, Memphis Slim, and 
Elmore James (yes, Moore 
could play slide, too), this fiery 
eight-song selection suggests 
there isn't that much left in 
the vaults, but the title track 
cover of B.B. King's 1964 hit 
- "Took you for a $100 dinner/ 
You said 'Thanks for the 
snack” - is essayed with 
extraordinary feel and great 
affection. However, Moore's 
originals here are more 
uneven, so while Looking 
At Your Picture surprises with 
its speedy drum and bass 
breakbeat, In My Dreams 
feels overly indebted to 
the 1979 Lynott/Moore UK 
Number 8 hit Parisienne 
Walkways. Moore's guitar-work 
is stellar throughout, though; 
dazzling in its ferocity. 
James McNair 


Kaleidoscope & 
Fairfield Parlour 


Sky Children: 
The Best Of... 


BEYOND BEFORE. 


Not to be con- 
fused with the 
American band 
of the same 
name, this 

’ Kaleidoscope 
were formed in London and 
made two albums on Fontana 
– 1967's Tangerine Dream and 
1969's Faintly Blowing – both 
textbook pieces of Brit psych, 
indebted to Syd Barrett-era 
Pink Floyd but more pop. In 
1970, they rebranded as the 
short-lived Fairfield Parlour, 
and on that year’s From Home 
To Home for Vertigo embraced 
а more folky, progressive 
sound. Both bands’ wares are 
best consumed whole, but 
this 17-track cherry-pick 
nevertheless provides a 
tantalising taste of what they 
were capable of: Kaleidoscope 
tracks such as Flight From 
Ashiya, A Dream For Julie and 
Sky Children are all enchanting 
fancies, while previously 
unissued archive footage 
of the Parlour’s 1970 Beat Club 
performance proves they 
could cut it live too. 
Lois Wilson 


LALLA ee ган 





Francisco Mora 
Catlett 


Mora! | and || 
FAR OUT. 


After working 
as a session 
percussionist 
for Capitol 
| Records in 
` = Mexico City, 
Francisco Mora played with 
Sun Ra from 1973-80, conceiv- 
ing Mora! in Detroit as an 
exploration of the black 
presence in the Americas. 
With double-bassist Rodney 
Whitaker of the Roy Hargrove 
Quintet, Strata Records founder 
Kenny Cox on piano, saxo- 
phonist Vincent Bowens and 
Emile Borde of the Tripoli Steel 
Band, 1987's private press 
Mora! draws on African-Carib- 
bean, Latin and Native Ameri- 
can motifs, as heard on Afra 
Jum, which interprets Haitian 
melodies; Samba De Amor 
diverts to Brazil; and Cultural 
Warrior allows Bowens, 
Whitaker, and Cox to take 
charge. For the sequel, record- 
ed soon after but shelved for 
decades, Mora added former 
Mingus trumpeter Marcus 
Belgrave, allowing greater 
melodic scope. Old Man Joe 
swings from blues to reggae 
and Amazona is a complex scat 
jam. This deep jazz dive has 
conjured profound results. 
David Katz 





Courtesy Sony 


Helen Apperley 








Bob Mould 


[сов on 20085618 


DEMON. 


sker Du output 
Following an unexpected 
mid-career turn towards elec- 
tronica, the releases collected 
here saw Mould return to the 
caustic songcraft that was his 
previous trademark. But this 
would be no simple retreat to 
the comfort of familiar sounds 
— albums like 2008's District 
Line and 2012's Silver Age 
found Mould's belief in the 
cathartic power of electric 
guitar revivified. He rediscov- 
ered a voice driven by fury but 
tempered by wisdom - "Never 
too old to contain my rage,” he 
barked on autobiographical 
Silver Age, while Nemeses Are 
Laughing, off 2014's smoulder- 
ing Beauty & Ruin, was venge- 
ance served cold and delicious. 
But maturity had won Mould a 
fragile peace with his demons, 
and 2019's excellent, unabash- 
edly poppy Sunshine Rock - its 
sleeve and sound an unapolo- 
getic tribute to the Beach Boys 
45s that raised him - offered a 
nostalgia balanced equally 
between bitter and sweet. 
Stevie Chick 


Telex 


This Is Telex 
MUTE. 


From the Man- 
neken Pis to 
Rene Magritte, 
eccentricity 
and surrealism 
has long been 
celebrated in Belgium. The 
Telex story, told on this 
14-track compilation, is a neat 
adjunct. In the late 1970s, the 
Moog-toting trio landed with 
synthpop takes on rock'n'roll 
standards and yé-yé, culminat- 
ing in the single Moskow 
Diskow. A potent mix of Kraft- 
werkian sang-froid and Gains- 
bourg rakishness, with lyrics 
that deliberately sent up dis- 
co’s French language obses- 
sion, it was a Europe-wide hit. 
In 1980 they even ‘claimed’ 
second-last place at Eurovision 
with a jaunty track named 
after the competition. Today, 
while the synth boogie woogie 
of Twist À Saint Tropez has 

a whiff of John Shuttleworth- 
like fromage, there's evidence 
here that the inclusive, 
disposable nature of Telex's 
work helped open up a new 


(IT ET E Шш: 





front for electronic music, 
far from Stockhausen and 
Carlos, and firmly placed it 
in the mainstream. 
Stephen Worthy 


Morgen 


Morgen 
NOW-AGAIN RESERVE. 


To say Morgen's 
sole album had 
a difficult birth 
is an under- 
statement - an 
unprovoked 
street attack put singer Steve 
Morgen out of action a year 
before its release, when his 
original band was kaput. It's 
easy to hear why its wide-eyed 
fudge of fuzzy garage and 
brooding hard rock has gained 
cult status among collectors 

— the acid-fried three-chord 
rush of Welcome To The Void, 
stop-start desperation blues 
of Beggin' Your Pardon and 
classic pop flirtation of She's 
The Nitetime splicing Murray 
Shiffrin's fiery Hendrix-like 
leads with bassist Bobby Rizzo 
and drummer Mike Ratti's 
relentless thrust. Abundant 
extras accentuate the Marmite 
quality of Morgen's OTT vocals 
and sexually voracious lyrics 

– a sticking point for some — 
but this undeniably druggy, 
speaker-shredding psychede- 
lia deserves to reach the audi- 
ence it missed. 





Andy Cowan 


Steve Harley & 
Cockney Rebel 


die Best Years Of 
Our Lives 
CHRYSALIS. 





seemed to 

m have set up 
=~) Cockney Rebel 
I. ^ as a major 
force, until the band upped 
and left leader Steve Harley. He 
recruited a new band, put his 
name in front of them and 
wrote a new song, Make Me 
Smile (Come Up And See Me), 
about the desertion. Still an 
inspiring slice of vitriol, his 
only Number 1 proved to be 
Harley's pension plan, but its 
attendant album was more 
than the hit plus filler. Mr 
Raffles (Man It Was Mean) 
remains his most beautiful 
song; the title track was heroi- 
cally self-indulgent ("If there's 
no room for laughter, there's 
no room for me"), while he was 
even slinky on 49th Parallel. 
This 2-LP version, on blue and 
orange vinyl to reflect a line in 
The Mad, Mad Moonlight, adds 
a selection of extra tracks, 
although nothing here is previ- 
ously unreleased. 
John Aizlewood 


| маца 1974's Тһе 
F <= Psychomodo 









Swine 


The Nightingales 


Pigs | On Pu poss 


CALL OF THE VOID. 


ONE OF THE many fascinating aspects 
of King Rocker, Michael Cumming and 
Stewart Lee's delightful 2021 profile of 
Nightingales frontman Robert Lloyd, was 
its refusal to shoehorn his band into any 
scene or sub-culture and instead to see 
this group of post-punk, post-pub, post- 
industrial prolix ranters as having few 
acolytes and little cultural sway; an island 
of brilliance in a sea of average. The weird 
thing is, that's not how I remember it. 

My cool school friend Simon bought 
Pigs On Purpose on release in 1982 after 
a rave review by Dave McCullough in 
Sounds magazine. We knew nothing about 
The Prefects — the derisive Birmingham 
punks fronted by Lloyd pre-Nightingales 
— but we liked this sound. As bookish 
contrarians we looked down our noses at 
heavy metal. But from the opening track, 
the aggrieved and verbose Blood For Dirt, 
with its piercing guitars and a demand for 
cheaper bus fares, this felt like our metal. 

Importantly, it was funny. Not at the 
band's expense but knowingly arch. Here 
were songs concerned with the prosaic 
vernacular minutiae of e 
boxes, shared flats, petty 
cash, pints of bitter and out- 
of-date bread; droll British 
kitchen-sink playlets 


NIGHTINGALES| 


PISS on бр 


fever 


delivered in a weary, mordant bellow; 
the majestic summoning call of the 
barroom autodidact. 

Also significant was the sound; angular, 
driving and ugly, just the music to irritate 
your peers. Thanks to older brothers, we 
already knew about Beefheart, but this 
sounded like the Captain stripped of the 
blues and all surreal desert poetry, played 
with cheap urgency on mail order guitars 
and cardboard drums; Corporal Fray 
Bentos and his Desperate Quartet. 

Everything sounds much beefier here, 
but no less tasty. You also get an extra disc 
of singles and demos from around the same 
time (including The Prefects’ scabrous 
Bristol Road Leads To Dachau) and some 
Eeyore-esque linernotes from Rob Lloyd 
which suggest that Pigs On Purpose failed 
to have much influence. Nonsense. As 
catalogued in John Robb’s 2009 book, 
Death To Trad Rock!, by 1985 there was 
a healthy DIY post-punk scene which saw 
bands such as A Witness, Pigbros, Big 
Flame and Bogshed, drawing less from 
the chilly, art-punk sounds of PiL, Wire or 
Magazine and directly from the verbose, 
working-class cheap-vox aggro of The 
Nightingales. In fact, it’s a sound whose 
non-conformist path can be traced up to 
the present day, not just in the current 
Nightingales but in bands such as Idles, 
Fontaines D.C., Black Country, New Road, 
and Squid, tapping into something vital, 
alive and true. Maybe Lee and Lloyd 
resist this version of history, 
happier to be recognised as 
unrecognised, a singular 
voice. Which Lloyd is, but 


he’s also an influential one. 











Don’t blink: 
The Prefects’ 
Robert Lloyd. 












OR HIS 1970 solo debut, John Lennon/ 

din Опо сы (Capitol/UMC) 

ХЖ УУЖ — now pimped-up in 
50th anniversary a remixed and 
massively expanded — John Lennon offered 
up a short, sharp shocker, a howl of anguish 
at his love-starved upbringing and the 
expectations heaped upon his shoulders as 
the '60s closed for business. Reaping the 
benefits of primal scream therapy, he 
carried the sessions into his songs, covering 
big topics in 10 succinct outbursts: God, 
love, class, justice, self-awareness, the 
loneliness of celebrity and the misery 
of parental abandonment. Bosh! 

The bludgeoning, distorted Well Well 
Well, the swearing in Working Class Hero 
(“fucking”) and I Found Out (“cock”), the 
grief expressed in Mother and My Mummy’s 
Dead, the rubbishing of all belief systems in 
God, including a curt dismissal of his much 
mourned band (“I don’t believe in Beatles... 
The dream is over, yesterday”), served to 
test Lennon’s audience. They certainly 
didn’t consume this record with the 
enthusiasm they’d show the following 
year for Imagine. Yet it was the most 
quintessential record he’d make, using 
a spare, trio format to focus one’s attention 
on the unambiguous songs, drawing you in 
with their candour and then punching you 
in the face for getting too close, distilling 
everything Lennon had ever learned about 


96 MOJO 


the impact of rock music, its beauty and 
its ugliness, sounding both elemental and 
ahead of the curve. 

Phil Spector’s production was brilliant, 
an object lesson in small band recording, 
every element earning its keep, beautifully 
emphasised by Paul Hicks’ clearer, punchier 
new Ultimate Mix. John’s voice sounds 
sensational throughout, shredding on Well 
Well Well, wistful on Love and Look At Me, 
acidic on Working Class Hero. This is the 
work that suggests Lennon inhabits the 
penthouse above the list of all-time great 
rock voices. He even does a quick 
impression of the Cookie Monster. Ringo 
Starr and Klaus Voormann sound amazing 
together, too. 

The reissue lands in multiple formats, 
including a super-deluxe version 
containing six hours of 
music across 6-CDs and 
two Blu-rays that bump it 
up to 11 hours, with extra 
outtakes, jams and the 
sessions for Yoko’s 
companion album. 

The complete menu 
is: Ultimate Mix of the 
whole album — also on 
the vinyl editions — 
with Give Peace A 
Chance, Cold Turkey 
and Instant Karma -— 
added. (The album's 
original 1970 mix isn't 
included.) Alternative 
versions and outtakes: 
Elements Mixes focuses on 
aspects of the songs, an 








WR 


Ultimate mixer: John 
and Yoko warm up 
with some rough 
rock’n’roll jams. 





e in the pain 


a cappella Mother, a totally dry Working 
Class Hero, that sort of thing; one disc of 
“home” demos and two of Raw Studio 
Mixes without effects or reverb. 
(Intriguingly, this has Take 91 of Mother!); 
a disc following the evolution of each son 
in mini documentaries. Particularly striking 
is the development of God, from a piss-take 
at home through its broadening in the 
studio, Lennon still working out the lyrics 
and the best key, while Ringo rehearses his 
between-line fills. Then, after John decides 
he dislikes the direction it’s headed, he 
drafts in Billy Preston to add gospel piano, 
which he plays rather like Lincoln Mayorga 
on Ketty Lester’s Love Letters. 

Twenty rough rock'n'roll jams and studio 
warm-ups, including snatches of Mystery 
Train, Get Back and early try-outs of I Don't 
Wanna Be A Soldier from Imagine are fun 
to hear. Finally, there's everything the same 
line-up rec arded for Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono 
Band. An opportunity has 

been missed to bring 
together both the Plastic 
Ono Band albums in one 
matching package. 
Perhaps another time. 
It's all too much, 
perhaps, but 
Lennon's debut 
remains thrilling, 
= ! challenging, 
direct and 
heartfelt. It's only one of 
the abiding tragedies of his 
short life that he never 
bettered it. 






\5 
NW. 


và olo WIL 





ru ac. Pace n on nan 





Titt DiLello 


Courtesy The Who 


Juju 
ЖЖЖЖ 
Live At 13| 


Prince Street 
STRUT. CD/LP 


Plunky Branch and со live at 
Ornette Coleman's New York 
gallery, 1973. 


Legendary 
jazz-funk col- 
lective One- 
ness Of Juju 
began as the 
avant-garde 
outfit Juju in San Francisco in 
1971, drawing on free jazz, 
Latin rhythms, and spiritual 
experimentation. After record- 
ing debut LP A Message From 
Mozambique, they decamped 
to New York to immerse them- 
selves in the Greenwich Village 
jazz community, surviving on 
25 cent pizza lunches and two- 
buck curry dinners. Ornette 
Coleman heard them at Lincoln 
Centre and invited them to 
occupy his SoHo gallery, where 
this intimate live LP was record- 
ed before small audiences over 
a few days. The players main- 
tain tight musical integration 
while allowing room for impro- 
vised expression. Mozambique 
is an Afro-Latin percussive jam 
that gives way to a plaintive 
vibraphone interlude and 
founder Plunky Branch's unfet- 
tered sax; Juju's Door reaches 
for the cosmos, and there are 
individual readings of Pharoah 
Sanders' Thembi and Eddie 
Palmieri's Azucar Pa' Ti. 

David Katz 


ИШИ 
Keith Jarrett 
ЖЖЖЖ 


Sun Bear Concerts 
ECM.LP 





Jazz pianist's landmark box 
set revived. 


РИ Putting out an 
= album contain- 
—— ing six-and-a- 
half hours of 
improvised 
= - solo piano 
music at a time when the pho- 
nographic industry was facing 
a recession seemed like an 
insane extravagance in 1978 
when ECM released Sun Bear 
Concerts, a 10-LP box set of five 
complete Keith Jarrett concerts 
recorded in Japan. But unlike 
most record companies, ECM 
valued artistic accomplishment 
over profit margins, and their 
unwavering commitment to 
Jarrett enabled one of his 
greatest triumphs. Over 40 
years on, the performances are 
still spellbinding. Jarrett's 
lengthy but always engagingly 
melodic extemporisations 
range from gentle nostalgic 
reveries to impassioned rhap- 
sodies and uplifting hymnals, 
all delivered in the limpid, 
lyrical style that became his 
trademark. Given its size, Sun 
Bear Concerts understandably 
never reached the 4 million 
sales of Jarrett's iconic 1975 
live album The Kóln Concert, 
but it nevertheless represents 
the absolute pinnacle of his 
famed solo recitals. 
Charles Waring 











Peggy Lee 


Kk 
Something Wonderful: 


Peggy Lee Sings The 
Great American 


Songbook 
OMNIVORE. CD/DL 


Jazz singer’s early 1950s 
radio recordings 


Never one for 
embroidering 
a melody with 
athletic twists 
and turns, 

| Peggy Lee 
made simplicity a virtue with 
her conversational singing 
style and laconic approach to 
musical storytelling. Though 
she was a prolific songwriter 
with over 200 copyrights to 
her name, this new 2-CD 
retrospective reveals that the 
North Dakota singer was also 
an astute interpreter of songs 
from the Great American 
Songbook. Compiled from 
early-’50s radio broadcasts, 
the compilation mostly 
focuses on the immortal 
compositions of Johnny 
Mercer (That Old Black Magic), 
Rodgers & Hart (Lover), Hoagy 
Carmichael (Georgia On My 
Mind) and Frank Loesser 
(Baby, It's Cold Outside), but 
the inclusion of a few of the 
chanteuse's own tunes (includ- 
ing the delightful US chart- 
toppers It's A Good Day and 
Manana) show that she was 
an accomplished composer 
whose work deserved a 

place in the Great American 
Songbook. 

Charles Waring 


ТШТ 
KMRU 
ЖЖЖЖ 


Logue 
INJAZERO. DL/LP 


Catch-all comp of Nairobi- 
based sound artist’s elusive 
self-releases circa 2017-19. 


Joseph Kama- 
ru's decision 

to start inter- 
weaving his 
phone's field 
recordings into 
his house and techno DJ sets 
was the beginning of an on- 
going voyage of discovery. 
The grandson of Kenya's late 
king of Kikuyu Benga was soon 
creating meditative yet never- 
static compositions, free of 
overly dramatic gestures, but 
rich in intimate detail. There's 
a healing, sedate quality to 
Jinja Encounters' descending 
harp refrain, A Meditation 

Of Listening's chirping high 
frequencies and, less typically, 
Argon's dramatic wash of 

sci-fi synths and bleeped 
refrains that feels like a salve 
for frayed times. As with Stars 
Of The Lid, Tim Hecker or 
William Basinski, KMRU's 
spacious drones and long 
loops allow for slow evocation, 
yet his thrifty use of found 
sounds establishes the point 
of difference - granting his 
unimposing music a vivid 
narrative otherness. 

Andy Cowan 


Beans means biz: The 
Who (from left) Keith 
Moon, Pete Townshend, 
John Entwistle and 
Roger Daltrey. 








Five CDs with 108 tracks, two 
/-inch singles, a lavish booklet 
and memorabilia: the ultimate 
Who box set. By Jon Savage. 


The Who 


Ж ЖЖЖЖ 
The Who Sell Out: 
Super Deluxe Edition 


UMC/POLYDOR. CD+LP/DL 


IN 1967, THE WHO were being pulled in 
several different directions at once: away 
from the hit single treadmill, away from 
smart Mod pop into psychedelia and heavy 
rock, away from the UK hit parade into 
the laborious process of breaking America. 
Released at the end of that year, The Who 
Sell Out was a brilliant album that both 
contained and developed all these 
contradictory impulses within a concept 
that caught the post Sgt. Pepper mood and, 
with its pirate radio theme, plugged into 
the social history of the time. 

This new Super Deluxe box doubles 
the 2009 reissue: a total immersion into 
the world of The Who in 1967 and 1968. 
The story of the album begins, as 
Townshend tells it, with him being 
summoned to Chris Stamp’s “really quite 
unpleasant” Soho office in late summer 
and being told that the label 
needed a Who album by 
Christmas. What existed 
was a ‘ragbag’ of singles, 
songs written b 
all four of the group, and 
tracks like Relax and 


pirit of rad 





FILTER REISSUES > 





ктщ 


io 
Armenia City In The Sky that caught 
the psychedelic lightning. 

After a mooted collection called 
"Who's Lily’ was rejected, Townshend 
needed to come up with an idea. The 
pivotal song was Odorono — recorded in 
October — that revealed the path forward: 
an album tied together with the spirit of 
the newly outlawed pirate radio stations. 
With new songs like Tattoo, a sequence of 
PAMS/Radio London jingles, and original 
Who adverts for Rotosound Strings, the 
Speakeasy et al, the result was a winning 
mix of pop, psychedelia, Hendrix/Cream 
heaviness and pirate radio flash. 

The original LP should be familiar to 
most readers, but this new edition adds a 
whole disc of studio sessions that are a 
pleasure: it’s great to hear The Who in 
their pomp working things out. It also 
pulls the story forward to 1968 — a strange 
year of odd but fascinating singles like 
Dogs and Magic Bus, and their B-sides. 
Opening with the Pop Art of Glow Girl 
and containing the extraordinary 
Melancholia, Disc 4 hints at the path 
Tommy took, as well as a road untravelled. 

Closing with a disc of 14 Pete 
Townshend demos — including Beach 
Boys pastiche Inside Outside USA — this 
box illuminates the difficult but inspired 
gestation of a major statement. Straddling 
surface and spirituality, naked commerce 
and psychological acuity, 
The Who Sell Out still 
remains fresh 53 years after 
its original release, and 
is thus worthy of this 
lavish and careful 
archive treatment. 














MOJO 97 





FILTER REISSUES 


Ahan PEL. 
| a | 


| 


єз Шы ы! 
a Ed 


. n 4 4 
a _ 


VARDEIRDS | 


The Yardbirds 


KKK x 
Yardbirds (Roger 
The Engineer) 

Super Deluxe Edition 


DEMON. 2-LP+3-CD+7-INCH 


Surely the final word on the 
storied group’s only UK 
studio album. 


The music is, of course, great 
— capturing the extraordinary 
Yardbirds flying high in 1966, 
still respectful of their blues 
beginnings (Rack My Mind) 
but grasping the possibilities 
of psychedelia (Over Under 
Sideways Down). Why this 
‘Super Deluxe’ version over 
the previous reissues, though? 
Firstly, the sound: original 
co-producer Paul Samwell- 
Smith has overseen the project 
and gone back to the original 
tapes; secondly, its compre- 
hensive nature. Housed ina 
12-inch lift-top box, we get the 
mono and stereo versions, on 
individual vinyl and CD respec- 
tively, the contemporaneous 
Happenings Ten Years Time 
Ago on 7-inch in period sleeve, 
a bonus CD of non-album 
singles and alternate mixes, 
plus а lavish booklet and A2 
fold-out poster. There’s only 
one previously unissued track, 
an early mix of Turn Into Earth. 
But still, what’s not to love? 
Lois Wilson 


Pet Shop Boys 
ЖЖЖЖ 


Discovery: Live In 
Ко 1994 


RHINO. CD+DVD 


“Previously only available 
on VHS” - a famous show 
in Brazil is dusted off. 


This self-parodic audio-visual 
revival gifts fans the feted Rio 
De Janeiro two-nighter of Pet 
Shop Boys' 1994 itinerary 
through Singapore, Australia 
and Latin America. Those who 
missed the jubilant shows can 
only imagine those wacky 
Beatle wigs, illuminated dunce 
caps, Montezuma staircase 
and quartet of down-to-their- 
undies cage-dancers, all the 
better, perhaps, to appreciate 
the sweet soul vocals of PSB's 
one-woman chorus, Katie 
Kissoon. The 21-song setlist 
mines five albums' worth of 
po-faced suburban disco, 
whose costume-changing 
zeal falls largely to Neil Ten- 
nant, who should not have 
agreed to a Comic Relief 
rendition of Absolutely 
Fabulous (which they didn't 
even write): а tonal emergency 
resolved by a full-throttle 
cover of Blur's Girls & Boys. 






ax 


Fans will appreciate the 
standard definition transfer, 
booklet, photos and tour 
diary, but it will not have 
escaped the duo's attention 
that Brazil's motto is "Ordem 
e Progresso” (“Order and 
Progress”). A sated multitude 
file out into the warm night 
to the stirring sound of 
Ethel Merman. 


Andrew Collins 





FLELTWODD МАГ 


Fleetwood Mac | 


ЖЖЖЖ 
Live (Super Deluxe) 


RHINO. CD/LP 





Edgy Tusk-era set, with bonus 
live tracks from 1977-82 on 
CD or two LPs plus 7-inch. 


Fleetwood Mac were the big- 
gest band in the world when 
they recorded this 1980 con- 
cert LP, but there's little trium- 
phalism. Instead, the awkward 
silence that follows Christine 
McVie's announcement they'll 
be playing tracks from Tusk 
speaks to how misunderstood 
their ambitious opus was upon 
release. Live captures the Mac 
on bruised form, swinging 
violently between wired 
(manic, ragged Not That 
Funny, blackly metallic I’m So 
Afraid) and fragile (movingly 
intimate Landslide; epic, mysti- 
cal Sara). As unflinching and 
unvarnished as their drugged- 
out portraits on the inner 
sleeve, it's a verité document of 


OF THE MONTH 





Various 
Impulse! Records: 


JUS 
And 


Moment 


IMPULSE! 


RIGHT FROM its 
inception in 1961 as the 


jazz imprint of ABC/ 


ic, Message 
The 


Paramount 


Records, a well- 
heeled major 
pop label, 
Impulse! had 
the creative 
mindset of an d 
independent am 
record company. d 
Initially | 
founded by 


producer 


Creed 


Taylor, 
Impulse! 


98 MOJO 


evolved under his 
successors (Bob Thiele 
and Ed Michel) into 

an entity that became 
synonymous with musical 
revolution, spiritual 
enlightenment, 
Afrocentrism, and socio- 
political commentary 
during a turbulent time in 
American history. Those 





themes resonate 
deeply in the 
grooves of the 25 


tracks on Music, Message 
And The Moment, a 4-LP 
set celebrating the 

iconic jazz label’s 60th 
anniversary. Ranging from 
the spiritual exaltations of 
the Coltranes (John and 
Alice) to the astral travels 
of Pharoah Sanders and 
the earthbound, bluesy 
soul-jazz of organist 
Shirley Scott and 
saxophonist Stanley 
Turrentine, the 


| retrospective takes 














the listener on an 


exhilarating journey 
through varied sonic 
landscapes. The 
aesthetically pleasing 
package includes 
two magazine- 
style booklets 
and a vinyl 
slip mat. 
Charles Waring 









a band on the edge, but with 
many moments of brilliance, 
not least a hushed backstage 
cover of The Beach Boys’ Farm- 
er’s Daughter. Highlights of the 
bonus live tracks include an 
infernal Sisters Of The Moon 
and a searing The Chain. 

Stevie Chick 


Roger Fakhr 


ЖЖЖЖ 
Fine Anyway 


HABIBI FUNK. CD/DL/LP 


After Sudanese jazz, Arabic 
funk and Tunisian disco, say 
Hi! to Lebanese yacht rock. 


UNE Unlucky to hit 
i his mid-’70s 
recording peak 
while civil war 
raged in Leba- 
non, Rogér 
Fakhr's solo works are known 
to just a few friends and own- 
ers of a privately pressed cas- 
sette. Culled from charmingly 
hissy reel-to-reels, Fine Anyway 
reveals the guitarist for singers 
Ziad Rahbani and Fairouz as a 
classy singer-songwriter in his 
own right, balancing Scott 
Walker's gravitas with Tony 
Joe White's naturalness on the 
cleverly ornamented analogue 
baroque of My Baby, She Is 

As Down As | Am, yearning 

yet groovy (Such) A Trip Thru 
Time and title track's bitten- 
lipped bravado. A brace of 
slicker studio offerings, 
recorded in exile in Paris, feel 
positively West Coast, with 
only the jolting chants and 
sirens of note-to-self Keep 
Going hinting at the turmoil 
surrounding him. 

Andy Cowan 


LL 
Bobby Cotter 


ЖЖЖЖ 
Missing You 


WE WANT SOUNDS. CD/DL/LP 


! T ET ed 


Super-rare super-groove 
from Chic's first vocalist. 


висит w- X Robert Cotter's 
debut album, 
! Missing You, 
yr was released 
| briefly on 
Morris Levy's 
tax-loss label Tiger Lily in 1976. 
Cotter burned briefly and 


P.J. Harvey, 
speaking 
volumes. 





brightly as the singer of Best 
Of Both Worlds, a New York 
rock-funk ensemble. He then 
joined forces with Nile Rodgers 
and Bernard Edwards to sing 
in the Big Apple Band, the 
precursor to Chic, and indeed, 
Love Rite and Saturday here 
mark their debut recordings 
on vinyl. Out of the band by 
1977, after one further album, 
Cotter vanished: not to an 
acid-drenched netherworld, 
but becoming a successful 
computer programmer. 
Missing You is a real find - all 
the Chic components are in 
place on their two tracks (Cot- 
ter’s co-write, Saturday, went 
on to become a disco standard) 
- but the other numbers, 
backed by Best Of Both Worlds, 
are more spiritual and soulful, 
notably God Bless The Surefire 
People and Three Wise Men, 
sweet and spaced-out. 

Daryl Easlea 


P.J. Harvey 


ЖЖЖЖ 
Uh Huh Her/Demos 


UMC/ISLAND. CD/DL/LP 


Polly Harvey's transitional 
sixth album. 


Released four 
F years after the 
: E № glancing pop 
є | crossover of 
к 7 2000's Stories 
OAM. ' From The City, 
Stories From The Sea, Uh Huh 
Her initially seemed like a 
sideways step. One of Polly 
Harvey's working notes to 
herself read "too PJ H?" but 
there was a slight over-famili- 
arity here, songs collating the 
brackish atmospheres of Is This 
Desire? (The Slow Drug), To 
Bring You My Love's swampy 
fables (No Child Of Mine), or 
Rid Of Me's army-booted rage 
(Who The Fuck?). Yet now, 
standing alone and accompa- 
nied by typically illuminating 
demos (in particular The Pocket 
Knife and a brutal Who The 
Fuck?), themes of romantic 
dysfunction and lingering 
despair (“shame is the shadow 
of love") are clearly articulated 
against the title's rock'n'roll 
mumble. A collection of 
great songs rather than 
a unified whole, Uh Huh Her 
still speaks volumes. 
Victoria Segal 





Maria Mochnacz 





Crosby, Stills 
Nash & Young 
KKKKK 

Déjà Vu: 50th 
Anniversary Deluxe 
Edition 


RHINO. CD/LP 


CSNY’s March 1970 debut 
turns 50: 4-CDs plus the 
original album on 180g 
LP or 5-LP editions. 


Before Déjà Vu was even 
released, it sold two million 
advance copies. It didn't hurt 
that three-quarters of the 
band, David Crosby, Stephen 
Stills and Graham Nash, had 
gone Top 10 the year before 
with their mellow beauty of 
a debut. Nor that, after Neil 
Young joined, they played 
both Woodstock and Altamont 
and were hailed as spokesmen 
for their generation. Their 
10-song debut, an ambitious 
mix of harmony and melody 
with dark, heavy guitars, did 
not disappoint. Nor does this 
latest reissue — a remastered 
original plus a CD each of 
demos, outtakes and 
alternative versions — other 
than the shortage of Young 
material, which was Young's 
decision, so the star count 
stays intact. The quantity and 
quality of the songs they have 
unearthed that didn't make it 
onto Déjà Vu is pretty amazing. 
Among the highlights: Croz's 
Song With No Name and 
Laughing; Stills' So Begins The 
Task and Bluebird Revisited; 
Young's Birds, with Nash on 
harmony; and an intimate 
recording of Nash's Our House, 
with a delighted Joni Mitchell 
singing along. 

Sylvie Simmons 


II 
The Mars Volta 


KKKK 
La Realidad De 


Los Suenos 
CLOUDSHILL. LP 


Dormant prog rockers 
collate their discography 
and archival relics. 


For some, The 
Mars Volta 

— the group 
forged from 
the ashes of At 
The Drive-In — 
remain one of the most 
inventive and compelling rock 
acts of the millennium era. For 
others they represent a black 
hole of musical self-absorption 
and unregulated prog excess. 
There is abundant evidence to 
support both arguments in 
this sprawling 18-LP box set 
collating their debut EP and six 
studio albums - all newly 





remastered - plus rarities. Of 
principal interest is Landscape 
Tantrums: the unfinished 
original recordings of their 
grandstanding debut Deloused 
In The Comatorium which were 
later finessed by Rick Rubin. 
On Drunkship Of Lanterns and 
Inertiatic ESP, the raw master 
tapes capture a band with a 
stunning sense of imagination 
and intensity. For the 
unconverted, this box set will 
likely astound and frustrate 
in equal measure. But for 
Volta's loyal disciples, it is 
a prayer answered. 

George Garner 


The Outsiders 


ЖЖЖ 
Count For Something: 


Albums, Demos, 


Live & Unreleased 
1976-1978 


CHERRY RED. CD 


Exhaustive 5-CD exhumation 
of ahead-of-their-times punks. 


In 1999, Adrian 
Borland's 
suicide left 

a legacy 

that chiefly 
revolved 
around his '80s near-misses 
The Sound. Before that, 
though, there were The 
Outsiders, formed at school 

by Borland in 1975. These 71 
tracks (just the 47 previously 
unreleased) comprising both 
their albums, a live show, 
demos and oddities are spread 
over five CDs. Such depth is 
over-egging the pudding, of 
course, but The Outsiders 
deserve more than footnote 
status. Released just three 
months after Marquee Moon, 
1977's Calling On Youth owed 
more to Television than just 
Borland's vocal similarity to 
Tom Verlaine. When they 
weren't being bog-standard 
first-generation punks, The 
Outsiders were a more 
musically complex proposition 
entirely, as Start Over and 
Walking Through A Storm 
twist and writhe as if Television 
hailed from Wimbledon. 
Curiously, they regressed 

and ditched that complexity 
on the following year's Close 
Up, which was snappier, more 
direct, but less adventurous. 
John Aizlewood 





COMING 
NEXT MONTH... 


Can, Mdou Moctar, Hailu Mergia, 
Gary Numan, Greentea Peng 
(pictured), Liz Phair, John Grant, 
Don Cherry, Crowded House, 
Gang Of Four, Georgia Ann 
Muldrow, Amy Winehouse 

and more... 


















Derrick Harriott 
And The 
Crystalites 


ЖЖЖЖ 
The Undertaker 


DOCTOR BIRD. CD 

From 1970, The Dynamites play 
Upsetters-like instrumental 
reggae: LP has 14 bonus cuts: 

a second disc adds another 

27 Harriott productions. /H 


linda smi №, Ep 





EGF 
ЖЖЖЖ 


Till Another Time: 
1916 


CAPTURED TRACKS. CD/DL/LP 


A Baltimore veteran of 
bedroom 4- and 8-track 
recording, this set of Smith's 
lo-fi cassette releases reveals 
soft echoes of the Velvets in 
meticulous melodies, dreamy 
Nico-ish voice and deadpan 
diary entry song-titles (I So 
Liked The Spring). JB 


NORTHERN | 
Sl QUI E | 





Various 
KKKK 


Northern Soul's Classiest 


Rarities Volume / 
KENT. CD/DL 


Two dozen diligently sought- 
out dancers chosen by Ady 
Croasdell from acetates, tapes 
etc. Familiarity of arrangement 
is key as unknowns (Ray Gant; 
Isaiah Smith, he’s a bit like 
Darrell Banks) and proven 
voices treat ears and feet. GB 


GLADYS KNIGHT 
A THE TIS 


Ware aie Sales 


UNITED SOULS. EP 


Double vinyl of 19 post-Motown 
chart showstoppers, mostly on 
Buddah, featuring Knight's full 
range - heartbreak to joy. 
Immaculate readings of some 
excellent songs from one of 
the great voices of the era. GB 


puc үй | 


TUE TAKE т TO 4 


DENI ° y 


Deniz Tek Г 
ЖЖЖЖ 
Таке It To The Vertical 


WILD HONEY. LP 


1992 solo debut by Radio 
Birdman founder Tek. 
Recorded in Texas with 
Stooges drummer and Ann 
Arbor scene peer Scott 
Asheton, there's less Detroit 
wailing, more dark country- 
Stones prowling (Steel Beach) 
and R&B groovin’ (Dead If 
Looks Could Kill). JB 


Sly | The Viscaynes 








LITT 
ne diu 


Sly & The Viscaynes 
ЖЖЖ 


Yellow Мооп 
ACE. CD/DL 


The Complete Recordings 1961- 
1962 are 19 mostly doo wop 
songs by Sylvester Stewart's 
Vallejo teen group; a few are 
Sly solo 45s as Danny Stewart. 
His lead on Real, True Love, 
their Coasters-like Uncle Sam 
Needs You and a classic cover of 
Oh What A Night are fascinating. 
Good note by Alec Palao. GB 





The Selecter - 
ххх 


Too Much Pressure 
CHRYSALIS. CD/LP 


This 3-CD remaster of 1980's 
2-Tone debut (plus bonus live 
and non-LP material) thumps 
home what a powerhouse unit 
the original Selecter were, with 
Charleys Anderson (bass) and 
Bembridge (drums) excelling. 
Also out on 45rpm vinyl. KC 





Various 


ххх 


Caught Beneath 
The Landslide 


DEMON. CD/LP 

Photographer Kevin Cummins 
does a 4-CD '90s indie mixtape 
to go with 2020's Britpop book: 
surprise choices by top names, 
desperate hopefuls, remixes 
and the odd ‘why?’ make the 
reviled decade seem like a lost 
lagoon of fun, warts and all. /Н 





Mary Wilson 
ЖЖЖ 

Магу Wilson: 
Expanded Edition 


MOTOWN/UME. CD/DL 


The late Supreme's only solo LP, 
with fans'favourite Red Hot, now 
has four previously unreleased 
tracks, three produced by Gus 
Dudgeon - a ballad (Love Talk), 
beatier rock (a Tina-like tilt at 
CCR's Green River) and a cover 
of disco hit Save Me. GB 


RATINGS & FORMATS 
Your guideto the month's best musicis now even more definitive with our handy format guide. 
CD COMPACT DISC DL DOWNLOAD ST STREAMING LP VINYL 
MC CASSETTE DVD DIGITAL VIDEO DISC CIN CINEMAS BR BLU-RAY 


хжхжх — **ХХХ ЖЖЖ 


EXCELLENT 


MOJO CLASSIC 


хх 


6000 


DISAPPOINTING 


* Ww 


BEST AVOIDED DEPLORABLE 


MOJO 99 








Ghost Box 


British" label. By Lois Wilson 


N 2020, Paul Weller's In Another Room EP was 
released on the ‘hauntological’ Ghost Box label, 
giving him the chance to explore his more outré 
tendencies. He describes the experience as: “А portal 
into another world. Something both familiar and half 
remembered and very British but also something very 
strange. No one else is doing what Jim [Jupp] and Julian 
[House] are. It's unique, and a total labour of love." 
That labour began in 2004 when Jupp, an architect 
technician, and his pal House, a graphic designer, set 
up Ghost Box as a website to sell CDRs of their 
respective bands on a burn-to-order basis. Jupp's 
Belbury Poly and House's The Focus Group 
specialised — and still do — in that 
creation of *another world", a 
preternatural parallel reality of post- 
war Britain, via a carefully 
choreographed set of ‘what ifs’, 
explored through primitive 
electronica, found sound, folk song, 
psychedelia, library music, horror 
soundtrack and lavish packaging. The 
name Ghost Box referred to the 
co-founders’ moniker for a ТУ, the 


phrase directly inspired by "70s 





100 MOJO 


= T M 
Caec pu 





This month you 
were introduced to 
the Ghost Box 
label. Next month 
we want your Stiff 
label Top 10. Send 
selections via 
Twitter, Facebook, 
Instagram or 
e-mail to mojo@ 
bauermedia.co.uk 


school programme Picture Box. 
Through word of mouth, the 
label found a small, committed 


fanbase, and in the mid-2000s 


became the flagship of a short- with the subject 
lived, but fecund scene including чүн UC 
i ecords' and we 
label allies Trunk Records and Шш thebest 
Mordant Music. comments. 


It was through 2009's Broadcast 
and Focus Group collaboration Investigate Witch Cults 
Of The Radio Age, issued on Warp, that Weller 
discovered their vivid arcana. *I loved that record and 
followed the threads, through The Focus Group to 
Julian to Ghost Box. I like the immersive quality, the 
music, the artwork, it all fits together." 

Indeed, a strong sense of identity pervades Ghost 
Box's catalogue, music and design running in tandem. 
House's style, like the music, draws on what he and 
Jupp call “faulty memory", a misremembered past of 

public information films, school 
textbooks, and in the case of their 
desirable Study Series of 45s, Romek 
Marber designed Pelican paperbacks 
from the '60s, summoning a sense of 
familiarity but also enduring enigma. 
"That's the key,” says Weller. 
“The feelings it evokes, it really 
resonates with something from 
your childhood, but you can’t quite 
put your finger on it. But whatever 
it is, it’s good.” 






Various 


Intermission 
GHOST BOX 2020, 


Ghost Box and their many 
friends adopt a ‘keep calm 
and carry on’ approach with 
this “response” to the global 
Covid pandemic and lock- 
down. In their healing 
Intermission you'll find 18 
tracks of wonderful variety: 
from the beautiful pastoral 
symphony of Woodberry Vale 
by The Hardy Tree, AKA Clay 
Pipe label founder and 
illustrator Frances Castle, 
through the / Hear A New World 
madness of The Animal Door by 
former Broadcast keyboardist 
Roj Stevens (his first recording 
since 2009's The Transactional 
Dharma Of Roj, which almost 
made this list), to the deep 
emotional connect of Tell Me 
Why by Sharron Kraus, and 
Plone’s joyful ident Running 
And Jumping. Soothing music 
for difficult times. 


COSMORAMA 





Beautify 
Junkyards 


Cosmorama 
GHOST BOX 2020, 


There’s an inbuilt timelessness 
to Beautify Junkyards’ work, 
with their verdant electric- 
acoustic Eden created amid 

a framework of classic pop, 
onto which they delicately 
apply Tropicália, acid folk and 
shoegaze. Obvious touch- 
stones are Os Mutantes and 
Broadcast, but on this blissed 
out fourth album - their 
second for Ghost Box - they 
transcend these antecedents 
and come of age. From the 
lush opener Dupla Exposição 
and giddying title track, sung 
by Smoke City's Nina Miranda, 
to the haunted mood of A 
Garden By The Sea, featuring 
the classical and contemporary 
harpist Eduardo Raon, and 
transportive closer The 
Fountain, Cosmorama's 11 
songs work as a manifesto 

for both group and label. 


Getty 


"==" | 
г * 


Plone 


Puzzlewood 
GHOST BOX 2020, £14.95 





A triumphant return from 
the reconfigured duo who 
began in the '90s. 


A pivotal influence on Jupp 
and Belbury Poly, the John 
Peel-endorsed Plone - their 
original line-up consisted of 
Mike 'Billy' Bainbridge, Michael 
Johnston and Mark Cancellara 
- played an integral part in the 
'905 retro-futurist scene in 
Birmingham that included 
Broadcast and Pram. After two 
albums they disbanded in 
2001, reuniting 19 years later 
as a duo - sans Cancellara, 
who now works as a DJ - 
releasing this comeback, 
comprising reconstructed 
material written over the 
interim period. A kaleidoscopic 
box of synthetic delights, 
Puzzlewood's 14 tracks are 
playful and buoyant with 
melody. Executed with a 
lightness of touch, they could 
very well have been themes 

to a forgotten late-’70s or 
early-'80s children's TV show. 





The 
Soundcarriers 


Entropicalia 
GHOST BOX 2014, £75 





Sweeping popsike from 
Notts four-piece. Elijah Wood 
and Jesse Chandler guest. 


Nottingham four-piece The 
Soundcarriers, formed in 2007, 
comprise Adam Cann, Paul 
Isherwood, Dorian Conway and 
Leonore Wheatley. In 2009 and 
2010 they released two albums 
on Melodic before recording 
this sole outing for Ghost Box. 
Taped in an empty warehouse, 
with electricity via cables from 
outside and hot water bottles 
stuffed up jumpers to keep 
warm, they channel psych 
energy and a love of kosmis- 
che, to create a widescreen 
sound shot through with 
space-age exotica and radiat- 
ing heat. Highpoints include 
Lose The Feel, diaphanous folk 
with Jesse Chandler of Midlake 
on flute, and This Is Normal, a 
12-minute freakout narrated 
by actor Elijah Wood with 
Chandler adding Philicorda, 

B3 Hammond and flute. 








The Belbury 
Circle Outward 


Journeys 
GHOST BOX 2017, £11.95 





Vestigial sound experiments 
from a Ghost Box super- 
group of sorts. 


This is the first full-length 
album from Jupp and Jon 
Brooks of The Advisory Circle, 
who come together to pay 
homage to the birth of the 
digital era. With the utilisation 
of analogue sequencers and 
primitive sampling, they 
conjure the wide-eyed 
wonderment of kids in the 
1970s watching the utopian 
possibilities unfold on 
Tomorrow’s World. Friend 

of the label and electronic 
avatar John Foxx gives his 
stamp of approval too, 
adding vocals and synthesizers 
to the psycho-geographical 
Trees and Forgotten Town. 
It’s also worth tracking down 
The Belbury Circle’s first EP 
from 2013, Empty Avenues, 
which also features the 
original Ultravox singer. 


=== 


Belliuiry Pol, 


GONE AWAY 


Belbury Poly 
The Gone Away 


GHOST BOX 2020, £14.95 





Jupp goes back to basics in 
documenting sinister faerie 
sightings. 


On this seventh album, the 
follow-up to 2016's New Ways 
Out, Jupp revisits Ghost Box’s 
hauntological roots with this 
three-years-in-the-making 
album inspired by the faerie 
folklore of the British Isles. 
These are not the twee, 
unthreatening creations 
depicted in Cicely Mary 
Barker's children’s books, but 
the creatures of amore 
unnerving variety that inhabit 
the stories of Arthur Machen 
and HP Lovecraft. Jupp also 
takes complete creative con- 
trol here: composing, produc- 
ing, arranging and playing a 
miscellany of instruments - 
recorder, ocarina, mellotron, 
Moog etc - in his search for 
ingress into their secret world. 
It’s a considerable achieve- 
ment in vision and scope, 
totally discombobulating but 
utterly enthralling. 





Eric Zann 
Ouroborindra 
GHOST BOX 2005, £25 


Pye Corner 
Audio 5tasis 


GHOST BOX 2016, £10.95 





Uneasy listening from the 
brainchild of synth outrider 
Martin Jenkins. 


In the eye of the electric 
storm: Jim Jupp creates a 
horror reverie. 


Jenkins' often chilling sound- 
scapes join the dots between 
science fiction - quotes from 
writers Arthur C Clarke and 
Ursula K Le Guin adorn the 
sleeve artwork to Stasis — 
English horror soundtracks 
and the BBC Radiophonic 
Workshop. Jupp calls these 
alluring innovations "sci-fi 
slow disco": Stasis, Jenkins' 
third Ghost Box album and 
follow-up to 2012's also- 
excellent Ghost Box debut 
Sleep Games, is just that, a 
somnambulistic post-rave 
dancefloor sound, with a hint 
of John Carpenter and 
Tangerine Dream also thrown 
in. He's since recorded 2019's 
Pye Corner Audio long-player 
Hollow Earth, another sonic 
pleasure; also check out his 
recordings as The Head 
Technician and The House 

In The Woods. 


Jupp fashions a tale of gothic 
proportions on this, the 

sole album to date recorded 
under his alias of Eric Zann – 
the name taken from a short 
story by HP Lovecraft. Playing 
with the notions of residual 
haunting and communication 
with the dead, he sends out 

a spiritual telegraph in an 
attempt to connect with the 
voices trapped within the 
static crackling from an 
untuned radio. Lose yourself 
in the concept and this can 
become hide-behind-the-sofa 
stuff as Jupp manipulates 
ancient oscillators, audio 
equipment, found sound 

and natural acoustics to 
summon spectral chills and 
hallucinogenic fever. Quotes 
from Nigel Kneale's 1972 TV 
play The Stone Tape on the 
inner sleeve further add to 
the creepy vibes. 








| INA- : чч et 
and fnendi 
invite you on board 








a. | eR Cj 


= E - = 


The Focus Group 
[he Elektrik Karousel 


GHOST BOX, 2013 








Julian House's comprehensive mapping of the curious 
cultural landscape at the heart of Ghost Box. 


Where The Focus Group's previous outings were constructed 
around psychedelic sound cut-ups to create the aural equivalent 
of his collaged sleeve designs - captured best on Hey Let Loose 
Your Love from 2005 - this excellent fourth album from the alias of 
Ghost Box co-founder Julian House is more closely aligned to the 
broader sonic palette of 2009's Broadcast and The Focus Group's 
Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age. In fact, Broadcast were 
again credited with assisting House in his scherzo reconfiguring 

of English psychedelic whimsy through a voluptuary of sonic 
tributaries stretching into a spacious sonic hinterland: Czech 
animation, Italian giallo, early BBC Radiophonic Workshop moves 
and, again, HP Lovecraft. The fun doesn't stop there: the album's 
sleeve, inspired by the underground press of the 1960s, is 
designed in such a way that it can also be played as a board game. 





HOW ТО BUY 


THEADVISOAY CIRCLE 





РАДИ GT HERE 


The Advisory 
Circle From 
Out Here 


GHOST BOX 2014, £14.95 





Messing about with home- 
built electronics and 
analogue synths creates a 
blueprint for audio theatre. 


Jupp calls him, “The master of 
electronic pieces", a tag borne 
out by a quick survey of com- 
poser, producer and engineer 
Jon Brooks' back catalogue: 
three albums of conceptual 
atmospheres recorded as King 
Of Woolworths, various one- 
offs under his own name, and 
two further LPs as Georges 
Vert and D.D. Denham for his 
own Cafe Kaput label. Plus, five 
LPs as The Advisory Circle for 
Ghost Box. This was his fourth 
for the label and followed 
2012's bucolic As The Crow Flies 
to stake out a John Wyndham- 
esque fantasy scripted around 
the idea of a perfect rural idyll, 
manipulated, even generated, 
by Al. Despite the dark concept, 
these analogue instrumentals 
are filtered with light. 


DIG THIS 














Ghost Box's 
bijou 7-inch 
catalogue 
also sculpts 
its own 
mystic 
Arcadia. 
Particularly 
nourishing 
for both the 
eyes and the ears are the 
Study Series, a set of 10 

split 7-inches released 
between 2010 and 2013 
featuring collaborations 
with likeminded guests 
including Broadcast, Trunk 
Records and Moon Wiring 
Club. Its follow-up series, 
Other Voices, delivered 
another set of 10 singles 
spanning 2014 to 2018, 
including Berlin-based acts 
Cavern Of Anti-Matter and 
ToiToiToi AKA Sebastian 
Counts. Also check out 
MOJO's guest editor's In 
Another Room EP from 2020, 
wherein he explores bird- 
song and wonky electronica 
to great effect. 


Special thanks to Jim Jupp. 


MOJO 101 





Shtterstick, Getty, Alamy 


| Get your gory locks 


РА 


off (clockwise from 


top): Francesca Annis 
and Jon Finch play the 
Macbeths in Polanski’s 
movie; singer and 
player Keith Chegwin; 
the Third Ear Band’s 
Glen Sweeney (left) 


and Paul Minns. 


sound an 


Third Ear Band 
Music From Macbeth 


HARVEST, 1972 


ODAY, DIRECTOR Roman Polanski 
| remains а fugitive from US justice, 
after he left the country in 1977 while 
awaiting sentencing for *unlawful intercourse 
with a minor." 

Five years earlier he'd released his film 
adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth. His first 
project since his wife Sharon Tate was 
murdered by the Manson Family in Los Angeles 
in August 1969, it was rejected by the major US 
studios and was eventually financed by Hugh 
Hefner's Playboy organisation. Stricken with 
bad weather on-set in Wales and Northum- 
berland, the violence-and-nudity-packed 
production went massively over budget and 
then bombed, losing more than $3 million. 

Less troubled by the curse of the Scottish 
Play was the haunting soundtrack by London 
transglobal, transtemporal ensemble the 
Third Ear Band. It's a favourite of MOJO guest 
editor Paul Weller. *I remembered the name 
from the music papers in the "70s, but I'd 
never listened to them," says Weller. *Since 
then I’ve listened to a few of their records but 
Ilove this one — I think it's really special." 

The group came together in the later '60s, 
after percussionist Glen Sweeney's spells in 
such free-form freak collectives as The Giant 
Sun Trolley and The Hydrogen Jukebox. 
“Glen always claimed that he was а junkie who 
cured himself of heroin by taking lots of acid," 
says ТЕВ manager and producer Andrew 
King. “Не was a complicated, determined 
little chap — he wasn't a great drummer, but 
things happened around him and he attracted 


102 MOJO 


d fury 





good people, like Paul Minns 
— the Coltrane of the oboe!" 
By 1971, Third Ear Band 
had opened for The Rolling 
Stones at Hyde Park and 
released two LPs and a sound- 
track for German TV film 
Abelard & Heloise. Then the 
call came from Polanski's 
office. Now with cellist/bassist 
Paul Buckmaster, future 
Hawkwind/Bowie violinist 


Tracks: Overture/ 
The Beach / Lady 
Macbeth / Inverness: 
Macbeth's Return- 
The Preparation- 
Fanfare-Duncan's 
Arrival / The Banquet 
/ Dagger And Death / 
At The Well-The 
Princes’ Escape- 
Coronation-Come 
Sealing Night / Court 
Dance / Fleance/ 
Grooms’ Dance / 
Bear Baiting / 
Ambush-Banquo’s 
Ghost / Going To 
Bed-Blind Man’s 
Buff-Requiescant- 
Sere And Yellow Leaf 
/ The Cauldron / 
Prophesies / Wicca 
Way 

Personnel: Paul 
Minns (oboe, 
recorder), Glen 
Sweeney (drms), 
Paul Buckmaster 
(cello, bs), Simon 
House (violin, VCS3 
synth), Denim 
Bridges (gtr), Keith 
Chegwin (vcls) 
Producer/ 
arranger: Third Ear 
Band, Andrew King 


Released: January 
1972 


Recorded: Air 
Studios, London 


Chart peak: n/a 


Current 
availability: 
Esoteric CD (2019) 





Simon House and guitarist Denim Bridges in 
the ranks, they were hired to soundtrack the 
Bard's bloody tale of regicide, fatal flaws and 
devilish equivocation in medieval Scotland. 

Band and manager went to Shepperton 
studios (“it was quite fun sitting in the canteen 
with all the film stars," says King) to confer as 
the production neared its end. When the film 
reached the editing stage, reels were brought 
two at a time to Air Studios on Oxford Circus. 
“They were played on a projector, and the 
band improvised to them, recording live," says 
King, who recalls three months of daily 


recording from summer 1971. 
“There was the proper level of 
concentration for what was 
hard and tiring work. They'd 
do several takes but I don't 
remember any editing. 
Polanski was involved, he 
popped in. I think he thought 
Buckmaster was the easiest guy 
to deal with, but I don't 
remember him interfering in an 
A&R, why-don't-you-do-this? 
sort of way. I think he just felt 
he'd set it up and let it happen. 
He'd have known straight away 
if something was going wrong." 
In contrast to the lengthy, 
floatational pieces so far 


recorded by the TEB, the 


soundtracks cues are short and 
intense. Building on the Sweeney/ 
Minns core of hand drums, oboe and 
recorder with spider-like guitars, strings, 
electric bass lines and electronic sounds, 
its droning evocations of horror, murder 
and supernatural gloom echo northern 
European medieval rites and revels, but 
also head for Neolithic tombs of the 

Mediterranean and further east, with folk 

rock, (burial) chamber music and aleatoric 

elements adding to the occult mystique. 

“Тез kind of hard to place what they 
do," says Weller. "Is it avant-garde? Is it 
medieval music? It's like, halfway between 
early electronic music and madrigals! At 
first they sound really dissonant, but then 
after a while you work out that it's not — 
it's just a harmony you're not used to. It's 
not hippyish; it's brutal. Kind of harsh, but 

in a cool way." 

The song Fleance uses an adaptation of 
Chaucer's 14th-century poem Merciless 
Beauty, sung by future British TV presenter 
Keith Chegwin, then aged 14. *I presume 
Keith Chegwin came in and did it at Air 
with the group," says King. *He wasa 
proper choirboy, he had a very good 
unbroken voice. It wasn't typical Third Ear 
Band — I think they thought it was a little 
bit coy and poppy, and a bit wet." Fleance 
later appeared in songs played on Johnny 
Rotten's Capital Radio appearance in '77. 

When the film was completed, King 
recalls a party ata London Mexican 
restaurant with much dancing on tables. It 
premiered in London on January 31, 1972, 
with Princess Anne in attendance. 
However, Third Ear Band did not achieve 
soundtrack success like Tangerine Dream 
or Popol Vuh. Buckmaster soon left — he'd 

already arranged for Bowie and the Stones — 
and in spring they lost their deal with Harvest. 
A new song-oriented album themed around 
Тагої cards for the Island label went unre- 
leased, and the group went on hiatus in "74, 
finally disbanding in 1993. Paul Minns took 
his own life in 1997; Sweeney died in 2005. 

“I don't think they ever thought they'd be a 
big group, but they wanted to make enough 
money to make it viable, and that did happen 
for a time," reflects King. “They sold rather 
more records than anyone would imagine — 
they always out-sold Kevin Ayers, for example. 


And they should have got 








Tat Y 


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LI TM ERN 





к nmm 


more film commissions, and 
probably should have done 
better... it's probably 
because they had a rotten 
manager — ie, me." 

As for Weller, he admits he 
hasn't seen the film — “Ра like 
to" — but wouldn't mind more 
soundtrack work, after 2017's 
boxing drama Jawbone. “Га 
like to do a horror," he says. 
“Nota slasher movie. I saw 
[2019 British psychological 
chiller] Saint Maud the other 
night — something like that...” 

lan Harrison 

















Paul Weller was interviewed by 
Danny Eccleston. 





X Ww 
ИТЕК SCREEN 


г 


Family Zz 
Guy & 





One from the 
heart: Susanna 
and Guy Clark. 


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Without Getting 
Killed Or Caught 


Dir: Tamara Saviano 
& Paul Whitfield 


SLOW UVALDE FILMS. ST. 


“НЕ DIDN’T CARE about 
mainstream music," said Susanna 
Clark of her husband Guy Clark. 
“His only desire was to write songs 
as great literature." 

Few wrote and sang songs as 
literate as Guy Clark. His two most famous 
were LA Freeway and Desperados Waiting 
For The Train. This bio-doc's title is from the 
former — a tale of being stuck on notoriously 
labyrinthine Los Angeles roads. Like all of 
Clark's songs, its story can be extrapolated 
into a universal theme — in this case craving 
escape from some hellish place. The latter 
song was a tribute to the hard-ass drifters 
he grew up with in West Texas, but it's also 
about facing death with stoic strength. 

Death pervades Without Getting Killed Or 
Caught and its three primary figures are gone: 
Guy and Susanna, and their best friend, the 
tragically fabled songwriter Townes Van 
Zandt. It’s a true-life Jules Et Jim, an 
extraordinary love triangle filled with great 


сён MEM 





music. Directors Saviano and 
Whitfield let Clark tell the story 
through readings of her journals by actress 
Sissy Spacek and excerpts from her tape 
recorder that she spoke to as if it was human. 
Guy and Van Zandt met in Houston folk 
coffeehouses in the mid-'60s. While grieving 
his girlfriend's suicide, Clark fell in love with 
her sister Susanna ТаПеу and they married. 
The peripatetic couple ended up in Nashville 
in 1971 and Guy got a song publishing deal. 
Susanna (a fine painter as well as songwriter) 
called their home *a hippy poet salon" where 
Guy mentored young ’uns like Steve Earle and 
Rodney Crowell. In 1975, he released his first 
album Old No. 1, a classic by every standard 
except commercially. He was unhappy with 
the production of his early records — he 
loathed attempts to commercialise and 


preferred stripped-down instrumentation. 
“Т was cursed with artistic integrity," 
he says with no false modesty in one of the 
interviews he gave the film-makers. (Earle, 
Crowell, Vince Gill and other talking heads 
fill in the gaps.) By the late '80s, Clark began 
making simpler recordings and by '95 he 
reached the top of the Americana charts. 
*Guy Clark not only fit the aesthetic perfectly," 
recalls one friend, *he helped define it." 
Meanwhile, the Clarks broke up and got 
back together, she wrote commercial country 
hits and Van Zandt drank himself to death. 
She was devastated and stayed in bed for 15 
years until her death in 2012. Guy followed 
four years later. It's a sad story, but the art it 
produced transcends the pain, as does their 
passion. "It's a mythical love story,” admits 
Guy in a film that’s as soulful as its protagonists. 





Creation Stories 


D 4 М ck Moran 


SKY CINEMA. ST 


m mf uml “ A | | HT an 
| Ul PM CIVI пу. 


| "Most of this 
happened," the 
title credits state 
LY FS optimistically over 
Primal Scream's 
ad Rocks. Disclaimer 
"T duly filed at the 
start, Nick Moran pitches his 
Irvine Welsh/Dean Cavanagh- 
scripted take on Alan McGee's 
2013 memoir as a crime caper 
narrated by the main protago- 
nist: how a drug-addicted 
chancer blagged his way past 
the UK music biz gatekeepers 
and got away with millions 
before the dream soured over 
dinner with Tony Blair and 
Jimmy Savile. Cribbing the 
Trainspotting guide to pillzap- 
oppin' hedonistic fantasy 
ensures no time to dwell on 
some wonky chronology, and 
actually provides Creation 
Stories with its consistent 
saving grace in Ewen Bremner, 
whose portrayal of McGee, 
wired or humbled, stands out 
from the breathless caricaturi- 
sation. Amid many well-kent 
faces - notably Richard Jobson 
as McGee's violent dad - the 








impressive Ciaran Lawless as 
young Bobby Gillespie begs a 
film of the G-man's forthcom- 
ing book Tenement Kid. 

Keith Cameron 


Poly Styrene: 
I Am A Cliche 


Dir: Celeste Bell 
and Paul Sng 


MODERN FILMS/SKY ARTS. C/ST 





| "Creative people 
don't make the 
best parents. She 
| neglected my 

| needsat times," 

| says Celeste Bell, 

| co-director with 
Paul Sng, in this documentary 
about her mother Poly Styrene's 
life and legacy. Poly's diary 
entries (read by Ruth Negga), 
along with rare archive footage 
from The Roxy and '70s CBGB's, 
plus eyewitness interviewees 
such as Vivienne Westwood, 
Don Letts and Vivien Goldman, 
build a portrait of a half-Somali 
female punk pioneer who was 
ahead of her time, tackling 
themes of racism, identity and 
consumerism in her songs. 

But it's the personal story of 





Celeste and her mother, 
becoming estranged through 
Poly's mental illness and 
neglect and then reconnecting 
with each other through music, 
that is the most moving aspect 
of the film, giving us insight 
into the troubled, sensitive 
thinker behind the iconic artist. 
Lucy O’Brien 


The United 
States Vs Billie 
Holiday 


FN FN i 


эопейп ап ппарэәоачу, Cl als 
ake room Tor DI ем 


I Billie Holiday 

is indulgently 
reframed here by 
the playwright 
Suzan-Lori Parks 
and the movie 
director, Precious 
iconoclast and film-stock 
dilettante Lee Daniels, in 

what is a long, slow-motion 
McCarthyite assassination, 
except with enviable supper- 
club interludes. Brothel-raised, 
Lady Day's audacity was to 
showcase civil rights spiritual 
Strange Fruit. Diana Ross was 
here in 1972 (Lady Sings The 


Blues), but this rich cast's rev- 
elation is fearless acting debu- 
tante and Stevie Wonder pro- 
tégée Andra Day, whose 
smokin' vocals need no dubs. 
Events shape her Billie into an 
infuriating recreational pin- 
cushion, patted between Feds- 
under-the-bed and violent 
managers claiming to be sav- 
iours. Cruelly cuffed to a hospi- 
tal gurney, she fobs off Bureau 
stalkers: "Your grandkids are 
gonna be singing Strange 
Fruit. Suck my black ass!" But 
Daniels saves his best provoca- 
tion for the end credits, when 
Day discovers co-star Trevante 
Rhodes has two left feet. 
Andrew Collins 


ШИИНИН 
New Order 


Education 
Entertainment 


Recreation 

WARNER MUSIC UK. BR/CD/DVD/LP 
Substantial, multi-format 
document of band’s only UK 
show of 2018. 

"We're having a fucking great 
time up here," announces 
Bernard Sumner from Alexandra 
Palace's stage, pretending 
everyone agrees with him bar 
drummer Stephen Morris. 
“No,” the singer reiterates, "it's 


good fun.” His typically dry 
assessment is also accurate: 
recorded on November 9, 
2018, this show is a buoyant, 
generous-spirited journey 
around New Order. Initially, 
Mike Christie's film is 
unpretentious to a fault, bright 
footage of phone-wielding 
audience members and stark 
stage shots deadening any 
dazzle or mystique. Yet both 
band and film warm up fast, 
songs from 2015's Music 
Complete robust alongside 
Ultraviolence ("sounds a lot 
better now than it did in the 
old days") or a sing-along 
Bizarre Love Triangle. After an 
early Disorder, they end with 
a Joy Division set-within-a-set, 
images of lan Curtis looming 
behind Atmosphere, Decades 
and Love Will Tear Us Apart. 
Exceeding the title's criteria 
— ambiguous "recreation" and 
all - it’s a solid monument to 
their past and present. 

Victoria Segal 





MOJO 105 





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MACHINE 


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Christian Rose/Dalle/IconicPix 


Bob Dylan: No 
Direction Home 


ЖЖЖЖ 
Robert Shelton 


PALAZZO. £30 


For Dylan's 80th birthday, 
a coffee-table-style return 
of the 1986 biography. 


If Robert Shelton 
never wrote 
another word 
after his New 
York Times rave 
of Bob Dylan's set 
| opening for The 
Greenbriar Boys in September 
1961 - the review heard 'round 
the world - he would have a 
sacred place in the singer's tale. 
But the critic, who died in 1995, 
stayed close to Dylan, turning 
that proximity and trust into a 
landmark account of Dylan's 
genesis and ascension. Shelton 
brought investigative ardour 
to his access - he was the first 
writer to speak to Dylan's 
parents, blowing up the myths 
their son peddled to obscure 
his origins — while his lengthy 
interviews with the star caught 
him unfiltered and on fire, at 
historic crossroads. This gener- 
ously illustrated update, based 
on Shelton's original preferred 
edit, published in 2011, has 
judicious cuts (such as Shelton's 
song-by-song LP breakdowns). 
The most puzzling trim: that 
'61 review, previously quoted 
in full but severely abridged 
here. If any book should have it 
intact, every time, it's this one. 
David Fricke 


Medical Grade 
Music 

KKKK 

Steve Davis & 


Kavus Torabi 
WHITE RABBIT. £20 





Musical epiphanies from the 
avant-psych-prog odd couple. 


It's always felt 
strange seeing 
S Steve Davis 

| behind the 
wheels of steel at 
HELLE rock gigs, as his 
fim Career trajectory, 
from world snooker champion 
to DJ and synth player, is unique. 
Guitarist/singer Kavus Torabi 
has played in Guapo, Cardiacs, 
Knifeworld and Gong, and met 
Davis at a 2006 Magma show 
in Paris. The two friends DJ 
together and make music in 
The Utopia Strong. Both write 
well in contrasting styles — 
Davis droll and Torabi more 
flamboyant - and their age 
difference keeps this memoir 
format fresh: Davis was drawn 
to Magma, Gentle Giant and 
Henry Cow in the '70s, and the 
younger Torabi describes 
transformative experiences 
with Stray Cats, Iron Maiden 
and Voivod. Their enthusiasm 
jumps off the page. Torabi: 
"Music is the most important 
thing there is"; Davis describes 
the joy of his first recording 
session on modular synth 
having just hit 60, showing that 
for some, the feeling never goes. 
Mike Barnes 











Rural Rhythm 


ЖЖЖЖ 
Tony Russell 


OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS. £22.99 


The story of Old Time 
Country in 78rpm records. 


MOJO contribu- 

| tor Russell has 
assembled a 
number of out- 
standing essays 
inspired by the 

| | sounds emanat- 
ing from a number of black 
shellac records first released 
during the 1920s, '30s and ‘40s. 
Some were primitive, offering 
versions of songs that were 
easily remade and reshaped by 
more talented artists in later 
years. Others were just poorly 
recorded, the victims of tech- 
niques yet to be discovered. 
But, as documented by Russell, 
they all offer aspects of lives 
and events that both inform 
and entertain. Commencing 
with The Little Old Log Cabin 
In The Lane by Fiddlin’ John 
Carson, the first recorded song 
in country music history (1923), 
Russell then moves on to deal 
with such subjects as Darwin- 
ism, which was dealt a would- 
be musical body blow by You 
Can't Make A Monkey Out Of 
Me, and prohibition, which 
inspired Where The Roses 
Bloom For The Bootlegger. 
Social history has rarely been 
more deftly delivered. 

Fred Dellar 


The World Of 
Bob Dylan 


KKK 
Ed: Sean Latham 


CUP. £20 


Bob Dylan vs the massed 
wonks of Cultural Theory. 
No, wait! Come back! 


Livelier and richer 
in insight than 

a collection of 

| essays from the 

М quasi-academic 

| zone of Dylan 

lE study (with titles 
including Judaism: Saturnine 
Melancholy And Dylan's 
Jewish Gnosis) promises to be, 
Sean Latham's symposium 
covers huge ground. Granted, 
some of it is dry: an apprecia- 
tion of The Bob Dylan Brand 
appears to have been written by 
Colin The Energy Vampire from 
What We Do In The Shadows. 
Yet many of the contributions 
sing: Greil Marcus, typically 
‘where the fuck's he going 
now?' on blues and venge- 
ance; the brilliant Ann Powers 
on physicality and sex in 
Dylan's work; an extremely 
sane and useful breakdown of 
Dylan biographies by Andrew 
Muir that deserves expansion 
— the logical next step of 
Dylanology is Bobliography. 
Slightly less satisfying are the 
trumpeted first fruits of deep 
delves into Tulsa's Dylan 
archive. To the question 
"What's in it?", Head Archivist 
Mark Davidson's answer seems 
to be: "Er, what isn't in it?" 
Danny Eccleston 





Three ways to access the 
shadow world of Тһе Fall. 
Ву lan Harrison. 


Excavate! The Wonderful 
And Frightening World 
Of The Fall 


ЖЖЖЖ 


Теѕѕа Norton & Bob Stanley 


FABER & FABER. £25 


The Otherwise 


ЖЖ Ж 
Mark Е Smith & гапат Ро 


STRANGE ATTRACTOR. £17.99 


Slang King: M.E.S On 
Stage 1977-2013 


Ж ЖЖЖ 
Bob Nickas & Nikholis Planck 


AT LAST. £30 


“WHY DON’T you get your shit together,” 
declared Mark E Smith, on-stage in 
Birmingham in March 1980, “and make it 
bad." Don't ask what the late Fall autarch 
meant: what made him tick has remained 
quantum -level elusive, existing in multiple 
states prismed through alcohol, antagonism 
and slanted autodidacticism. Helpful, then, 
that these three books stir up the psycho- 
sediment by avoiding straight biography 
(the above quote is from Slang King, 
a collection of on-stage MES adlibs). 
Blockiest and most free ranging 
is compendium/scrapbook Excavate! 
Therein, essayists including Michael 
Bracewell, Adelle Stripe and the late 
Mark Fisher chew over such Smith 
centralities as his class consciousness, 
sense of place, the everyday “weird”/ 
occult that gave his output such fortifying 
strangeness, and beyond. There's much 
fun to be had: Ian Penman, reflecting 
on substances and addiction, 
compares MES to Margaret 
Thatcher, and wonders, “Does 
any contrarian start to repeat 
themselves just by being 
consistently contrarian?” 
Co-editor Stanley, by contrast, 
relates The Fall’s “non- 
professional” status to low- 


Text Enduction Hours 





Writing the signs: 
The Fall, Mark Е 
€. 0 Smith, far right. 





level football and persuasively casts 
Shakin’ Stevens as the anti-MES. 

It’s punctuated by fabulous ephemera, 
vintage interviews and carbon-copied 
original lyric sheets — Smith rarely 
sanctioned this, so there’s something 
almost indecent about seeing them — plus 
near-indecipherable handwritten notes 
from 2017, a poignant reminder of his 
courageous, boots-on last years. (Some 
readers may rebuff the more scholarly 
contributions with: “Academic male slags/ 
Ream off names of books and bands” 
from 1981 fan-fave Slates, Slags Etc.) 

Presenting Smith’s 2015 script for a 
Fall-starring horror film, The Otherwise 
suffers from no such mitigation. With 
echoes of undead biker flick 
Psychomania, it finds MES depicting 
himself as spooked but composed when 
Jacobite ghosts appear. A touching 
foreword by Smith's wife Elena reveals 
his refreshingly broad telly habits 
(Eurovision, Keeping Up Appearances), 
though the real shocker is his plan for 
a musical where characters would 
lip-sync Fall songs. 

Compiled by New York art curator 
Nickas and illustrated by Planck, Slang 
King is the lightest volume here, but its 
collection of verbal riffing gets you there 
anyway. Аз years and venues pass, lyrics 
escape their moorings into whatever was 
annoying Smith at that moment: cracked 
grist includes digs at Julian Cope, band 
splits (in real time at one 1998 NY show) 
and music biz perfidy. Quieter after 
1983, in meltdown year '96 he confesses, 
"brother, I cannot write these signs 
any more," but a few pages later he's 
confounding a Cardiff crowd with the 
trenchant instruction, *Litmus stained. 
It was nutmeg. Hup!" 

All worth a Fall watcher's attention, 
these books add to a vaster, ongoing, part- 
work biography, alongside such 
essential reads as bassist Steve 
Hanley's The Big Midweek, 
and volumes still to be written. 
The group's last album was 
2017's New Facts Emerge, and 
in this ever-shifting sui generis 
musical dimension it seems 


they always will. 


MOJO 105 


REAL СОМЕ 7 


Roots, Radic, Rocker: Bunny 
Wailer in Notting Hill, August 
1988: (opposite) in Kingston in 
later years; (bottom) starting 
out with The Wailers (from left) 
Bunny, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh. 








Blackheart Man 


by reports that Livingston 
had indicated it was about 
a vibrator. 

Quieter from 1990, he 
would settle into his roles as 
custodian of The Wailers' 
legacy and elder statesman of 
roots reggae, puffing on his 
pipe with a Lion Of Judah 
medallion on his forehead, 
referring to himself in the third 
person and dressed, some- 
times, in the brilliant white 
uniform of a spiritual general. 

Based at Dreamland Farm, 
the 142-acre estate in the hills 




























































EGGAE APOSTLE David Rodigan, 
who named Bunny Wailer's solo 
debut Blackheart Man as his 
favourite ever album, has likened the 
magnitude of the 1973 split of the original 
Wailers group to that of The Beatles. The 
comparison's easily extended: if revolu- 
tionary Peter Tosh was John Lennon and 
pop superstar Bob Marley was Paul 
McCartney, then the group's spiritual 
envoy and lower-key musical superpower 
- their George - was Neville O'Riley 
Livingston, better known as Bunny Wailer. 





R 


Short in stature but formidable in | mel | er outside Kingston which he 
charisma and accomplishment, he was м, “а, | | (Island, 1976) posited as a future centre of 
born on April 10, 1947 and raised in | The Sound: legal ganja production, his 
Kingston and rural Nine Mile, Jamaica. His | Infused with Rasta | later activities included 
father Thaddeus, AKA Mr Taddy, was a of struggle seemed to pay off when уна us founding his United Progressive 
country shopkeeper and revivalist preacher, they signed an international deal Against Conviction People's party, recording with his 
and from a young age Neville played drums in with the Island label, touring the UK relates to his jail bandmates' sons Ky-Mani Marley 
church. He was eight when his father started and America and releasing the time, while the - and Andrew Tosh, revisiting 
a relationship with Cedella Marley, and her Catch A Fire and Burnin' albums in compassionate | Blackheart Man live in 2016, and, for 
son Bob duly became an admired de facto 1973. Yet, wary of touring and transcendence cm his 70th birthday, launching a 
sibling. Bunny recalled playing bamboo suspicious of Island’s promotion transformation), Bunny Wailer museum in Kingston. 
guitar and singing to his older brother, yet it of Marley as solo star - and the this exquisitely At the opening of this "tabernacle of 
was Marley who made the first move into overdubs which made the band ен The Wailers", packed with the 
music. After cutting singles for the Beverley's more palatable to white rock reggae album was trophies and memorabilia of a 
label aged just 17, he impressed upon Bunny audiences – Bunny chose to the artistic equal of lifetime in music, he reflected, 
that they should form a band. Tutored by leave what he considered the anything The Wailers | “Robert Marley can’t tell ‘im story. 
community-minded professional Joe Higgs, "segregated" band, and was Bab ра Peter Tosh can't tell ‘im story. | have 
the group's crucial formation came together followed soon after by Tosh. silken — see the end- to be the one haffi tell all three 
in Kingston's Trench Town when they were Explaining that he had "pre- times Armagideon Wailers' story... becausel am the 
joined by singer and guitarist Peter Tosh. served" himself through Rastafari, (Armagedon) — but survivor. | am here representing 

Higgs drilled The Wailing Wailers in their his songwriting and voice would at Mid what The Wailers stood for." 
harmonies – he had them sing in the last come into its own on 1976's closer This Train, the He had suffered a serious stroke 
cemetery "for the spirits", Bunny recalled – roots masterpiece Blackheart Man. ride’s ultimately a last summer, soon after his wife 
and the group would score a nationwide Featuring both of his former | transportofdelight. | ^ Jean Watt, who had been diag- 
Number 1 in early 1964 with their debut bandmates, it remains an album of nosed with dementia, had gone 
single Simmer Down, a thrusting ska remarkable scope, vision and emotive missing from their home. 
barnstormer instructing the capital's rudies force. Significantly, it was named for a "Jah B brought good and righteousness 
to leave civilians alone. The same year the Jamaican bogeyman figure, recast with through his life," said hisfamily in a statement 
group were photographed in sharp suits: in telling sympathy. after his death, saluting their "spiritual leader, 
1979 the image would inspire Jerry Dammers' "That's what we were at first taught, that brother, father and lion." 
design for 2-Tone mascot Walt Jabsco. the Rasta man is the blackheart man," Bunny lan Harrison 

Unremunerated, the group's progress was told Sounds’ Vivien Goldman in 1976. "The 
not easy. They persevered even when Marley blackheart man who will take you and carry 
was absent in the US in 1965, and, after he you away and eat out your heart. [Eventually 
returned, carried on when Bunny was you] see that he's a man, that he has habits 
sentenced to 14 months in Kingston's General like a тап... growing up, you realise – it's like 
Penitentiary for marijuana possession т 1967. yourself. It’s like running from yourself." 

It was an experience that would colour his Bunny would never run from The Wailers. 
worldview and artistic life forever. He played the One Love peace concert 

"| was sent to a university wherelobtained alongside Tosh and Marley in 1978, recorded 

= all the knowledge that | would not have the superb Sings The Wailers collection in 

E obtained had I not been in confinement," he 1979, and never stopped covering Marley's 

2 reflected to MOJO's David Katz in 2009. material. He worked at his own pace and on 
~ "Babylon has made an error sending Bunny his own terms, having set up his Solomonic 

С Wailer to prison, because... you have label in 1972, playing live when he wanted to 
& strengthened Bunny Wailer." He and widening his stylistic 

= later insisted that he had no range into dub, dancehall 

5 criminal record, and his and - giving the lie to his 

> sentence was due to adminis- | stern reputation - disco and 
2 trative error. rap. 1980's party tune 

©  Onhis release The Wailers Electric Boogie would find 
= got back to work, cutting some US success when it was 

8 of their most essential record- re-recorded by Marcia 

= ings with Lee Perry and Griffiths in 1983, though in 
A embracing Rastafari. The years 2018 she was displeased 









Chris Barber 





































“Let us not talk of ‘trad’ and banjos 
and things,” insisted Mike Hales’ 
sleevenote for Chris Barber’s 
landmark 1969 album Battersea 
Rain Dance. “Let us yet think of 
music and musicians, of mop 

tops and soul men, of jazz giants 
and fading, even dead, blues 
masters...” 

What was true for that record – 
with its brilliantly unclassifiable 
two-minute Barber-penned title 
track, guest appearances from 
Brian Auger and Paul McCartney, 
and striking big-band beat-group 
versions of tunes by Charles 
Mingus, Curtis Mayfield and Joe 
Zawinul, among others - is doubly 
apt for Chris Barber’s career as 
a whole. The urbane and 
open-minded trombonist and 
bandleader did as much as апу 
other single musician to shape the 
British musical landscape of 
homegrown responses to black 
American innovation. 

Born Donald Christopher 
Barber in Welwyn Garden City on 
April 17, 1930, he was the true 
Godfather of the British blues 


break and bringing Sister Rosetta 
Tharpe, Muddy Waters, Big Bill 
Broonzy, and Sonny Terry And 
Brownie McGee to Britain in the 
late 1950s. He was the midwife of 
British rock'n'roll, too, launching 


108 MOJO 


boom - giving Alexis Korner his big 


the skiffle boom by playing double 


Chris Barber, 
urbane ‘bone. 





bass on his banjo player Lonnie 
Donegan's Rock Island Line single, 
which was recorded in downtime 
ona 1956 Barber studio session. 

His was also the first British group 
to play on the Ed Sullivan Show, 
selling a million copies of their 

1959 version of Sidney Bechet's 
Petite Fleur. 

In the'60s and 70s Barber 
established a particular rapport 
with jazz-lovers behind the Iron 
Curtain - a special relationship 
sealed with a double live album 
recorded in East Berlin. He carried 
on working right up to his 
retirement in 2019, touring the US 
and Europe, with the release of 
2011's Memories Of My Trip – featur- 
ing collaborations with admirers 
including Van Morrison and Dr. 
John - alate career highlight. The 
whole thing seems to have been 
fun, though, and when this writer 
spoke to him (in 2018) about his 
amazing 1972 trad jazz/space rock 
crossover album Drat That Fratle 
Rat!, he fondly recalled playing a 
one-off gig with Rory Gallagher at 
a disused cinema in Swindon. 

Ben Thompson 








James Burke 


| Amember of 
Chicago's TheFive 
Stairsteps - ‘The 
First Family of Soul’ 
- James Burke hit 
the US pop Top 10 
in 1970 with the 
uplifting O-o-h 
Child, a much-covered and 
sampled song of new-dawn 
optimism. For the group, formed 
by patriarch and former Chicago 
detective Clarence Sr, it followed a 
run of 12 Top 40 R&B hits stretching 
backto 1966. Brothers Kenneth, 
Clarence Jr, Dennis, sister Alohe 
and James had signed to Curtis 
Mayfield’s Windy City label after 
atalent show win. Following the 
Stairsteps' signature hit, written 
and produced by Stan Vincent for 
Buddah, they struggled to repeat 
the success, despite signing to 
George Harrison's Dark Horse label 
for 1976's Billy Preston-produced 
2nd Resurrection, and they split up 
soon after. Two years later they 
re-formed as The Invisible Man's 
Band, recording the disco hit АП 
Night Thing, but again went their 
separate ways. James later focused 
on making art, which he'd studied 
in Chicago. 

Geoff Brown 


Dan Sartain 


Raised in impoverished steeltown 
Fairfield, Alabama, Daniel Frederick 
Sartain debuted in ferocious 
post-hardcore unit Plate Six. In 
2001-02 he cuttwo self-released 
albums of hollow-bodied guitar 
rock and got lucky when he foisted 
those self-releases on Rocket From 
The Crypt mainman John ‘Speedo’ 
Reis at a local show. Reis signed him 
to his Swami label for three 
colourfully lyrical, rockabilly- 
charged albums which duly 












collided with the early-'00s 
garage-rock revival. Tours with 
The White Stripes and The Hives 
ensued, plus the eighth 45 on Jack 
White's Third Man Records. But 
‘the Cadaver from Alabama’ (Reis's 
affectionate nickname for his 
haunted protégé) simply wasn't 
wired to capitalise: Sartain 
deviated into Ramones homage, 
Suicide-inspired coldwave and 
ultimately hairdressing, opening 
a barber's shop in Woodlawn, AL. 
Last October he was 'back', busting 
out live takes from Sun Studios. The 
cause of death was unconfirmed as 
MOJO went to press. 

Andrew Perry 


Don Heffington 


Don Heffington's 
résumé isa 
working musician's 
pipe dream: Bob 
Dylan, Emmylou 
Harris, Jackson 
Browne, Dave 
ees Alvin, Dwight 
Yoakam, The Wallflowers and 
many others. The Los Angeles 
native was taught drumming by his 
grandmother and played in a jazz 
quintet at 15, inspired by seeing 
John Coltrane live. Reflecting his 
stubborn diversity, he also fell in 
love with country music, and in the 
1980s was a founding member of 
the band Lone Justice, the Maria 
McKee-fronted country-punkers 
thought to be destined for 
next-big-thingdom, only to be 
mismanaged. Heffington moved 
on, most famously playing with 
Dylan on the original tracks 
transformed into the classic 
Brownsville Girl. Recently he'd 
been blending folk and jazz, 
writing and singing originals such 
as John Coltrane On The Jukebox. 
"Don always made percussion an 
integral part of the conversation," 
says collaborator and friend Van 
Dyke Parks. “Не wasn't a slave 

to genres." 





Michael Simmons 


Dan Sartain: 
Alabama Shaker. 


Avalon.red, Getty (3) 





Avalon.red (2), Getty, Courtesy Captured Tracks, Courtesy waterwingrecords.bandcamp.com 


Bruce Hawes 





Ий Though notas 

8 well-known as 
B Gamble & Huff or 
Thom Bell - the 
songwriters, 
producers and 
chief architects of 
'70s Philadelphia 
soul - Bruce Hawes co-wrote two of 
the City Of Brotherly Love's biggest 
R&B hits: The Spinners’ Mighty 
Love (1974) and Games People Play 
(1975). A preacher's son who sang 
in a church choir, Philly-born Hawes 


ч = 


The Three Degrees, Gladys Knight 
& The Pips and Phyllis Hyman. In 
later life, Hawes left Philadelphia 
for Florida, where he continued to 
write and produce. 

Charles Waring 


Malcolm Cecil 


As a young bassist in London, 
Malcolm Cecil spent the early '60s 
playing jazz and blues with the 
likes of Alexis Korner, Cyril Davies 
and Ronnie Scott. In 1968, having 
relocated to New York, he met 
Moog-owner Bob Margouleff. The 


TENE DE Пт = 
= ее шины And a 
- - 


= ше 


Malcolm Cecil: 
the analogue 
adventurer 
with TONTO. 


was steeped in the sanctified 


cadences of gospel music but 
began writing secular songs in his 
teens, and т 1973 joined Thom 
Bell’s production company asa 
staff songwriter. Under Bell, Hawes’ 
talent rapidly blossomed and he 
went on to write for a raft of soul 
acts in the 70s and '80s, including 





MUSIC EXECUTIVES 

(below, 
b.1939) was a close associate 
of Bob Dylan and wife of 
Dylan's manager, Albert. She 
famously appears on the 
cover of Bringing It All Back 
Home, enigmatically smoking 
a cigarette on a chaise longue 
in a bright vermilion 
Ure SU 
Manhattan-born 
Sally Ann 
Buehler 
dropped out 
of college to 
join the 
Greenwich 
Village arts 
СЕНЕ ЕЕ 
Albert Grossman 
while working in Café 
Wha?.Settling in Woodstock, 
the couple ran the Bearsville 
record label and recording 
studio, and later the Bearsville 
Theatre. Іп 2008 she curated a 
unique digital archive of the 
sacred Bengali music Baul. 


HEADHUNTERS bassist 

(b.1947) 
studied piano and bassoon 
before taking up standup 
bass aged nine. He joined 
Herbie Hancock for the 
jazz-fusion trailblazer's 1973 
smash Head Hunters. After 
Hancock departed, Jackson 
and the other members 
stayed together; 1975's God 
Made Me Funky became an 
essential hip-hop sample. 
Other sessions included the 
Pointer Sisters, Santana 
and Sonny Rollins. He later 
recorded solo, worked in jazz 
education and lived in Japan. 
"He could create a new bass 
line on every tune every 
night," said Hancock, by way 
of tribute. 












two went on to build various 
analogue synthesizer modules into 
a semicircular, one-ton wall of 
polyphonic technology they called 
The Original New Timbral 
Orchestra, or TONTO for short. 
Named TONTO's Expanding Head 
Band after a concept glimpsed by 
Margouleff while tripping on 


peyote, two pioneering albums 
followed, and the duo would also 
play on and co-produce Stevie 
Wonder's 1972-74 run of classic LPs. 
The Isley Brothers, the Doobie 
Brothers and Randy Newman also 
called upon their synth expertise, 
before Margouleff split from the 
project in 1975. Cecil retained 


THEY ALSO SERVED 


DUTCH ENGINEER 
(b.1926) showed 
his technical talent at an early 
age, devising a radio able to 
pickup jammed stations 
during the Nazi occupation 
ofthe Netherlands in the 
Second World War. When 
working for Philips in the '60s, 
he worked on portable 
tape recorders, 
SE.  andledthe 
——— team which 
. developed 
| thecassette, 
unveiled in 
| 1963. He later 
reflected that 
he would 
dieere nothing 
aboutthe design. 
In the 1970s he was also 
involved in the development 
of the compact disc. 


PHOTOGRAPHER and guitarist 
S (below, 
0.1944) met Glenn Brancaat 
an auditionfor Theoretical 
Girls in 1978. Their meeting 
sparked a personal and 
creative relationship that 
lasted over 20 years: as well as 
creating Just Another Asshole 
fanzine, she played with NY no 
wave groups Y Pants, The 
Static and later Ultra Vulva. 
As a photographer she 
explored the boundaries of 
perception, most famously in 
large-scale works created with 
a pinhole сатега. п 2001 Ess 
and Peggy Ahwesh released 
their Radio/Guitar project 
on Thurston Moore's 
BESTS UIC е 
label, layering 
Ess's electric 
guitar over 
radio sounds. 


| be 
| | тае 


POET and guitarist 


, AKA Japonais 
(b.1960) was an early member 
of Tinariwen. Born in 
Tessalit, in Mali's north-east- 
ern Sahara region, like many 
young Tuaregs he received 
military training in Libya in 
the 1980s, meeting Ibrahim 
Ag Alhabib and other future 
band members at a rebel 
camp. As part of Tinariwen's 
mutable collective, Ag Itlale's 
lead guitar and vocals can be 
heard most prominently on 
2006 album Aman Iman: 
Water Is Life, for which he 
wrote and performed 
Ahimana, a song about those 
early days in Libya, and Awa 
Didjen,lamenting the 
drought and famine that took 
the Tuareg people to Libya 
in the first place. 


RAPPER 
| (b.Mark 

Morales, 1968) formed 
human beatboxing hip-hop 
trio The Disco Three in 
Brooklyn: after winning a 
talent show in 1983, they 
changed their name to the 
Fat Boys. Number 2 in 1987 
with their Beach Boys 
team-up Wipeout, the follow- 
ing yearthey repeated the 
feat with The Twist, assisted 
by Chubby Checker. Not the 
most serious of rappers, they 
appeared in three films, 
including Krush Groove and 
the Three Stooges-like 
comedy Disorderlies (1987). 
After leaving the 

group in 1989, he 
b recorded solo, 
worked with 

Mary J Blige, 

Mariah 
| Carey, 


Destiny's Child and others, 
was а radio host, and took 
part in Fat Boys reformations. 


KEYBOARDIST 

(6.1987) was ап 
original member of New 
Jersey punks Titus 
Andronicus. Не was cousin 
to the group's frontman, 
Patrick Stickles: a photo of 
the pair as children features 
onthe cover of TA's fifth LP, 
A Productive Cough, where 
Miller can also be heard amid 
a rabble of backing vocals. He 
sang lead on the title track to 
2018 EP Home Alone (On 
Halloween) and has credits 
on 2010's The Monitor and The 
Most Lamentable Tragedy in 
2015. Miller played Money, 
the rapping bartender in the 
pilot episode of Stickles’ 
sitcom, Stacks, and is 
co-credited for additional 
jokes with Ryley Walker. 


SONGWRITER 
(right, 6.1952) 
formed Long Island 
punk-poppers Milk’N’ 
Cookies in 1973. 
Too clean-cut for 





custody of TONTO, and worked 
with Gil Scott-Heron, Quincy Jones, 
Steve Hillage and many others. In 
later life he ran a studio in upstate 
New York; TONTO was sold to the 
National Music Centre in Calgary in 
2013, where it was fully restored 
and is still available for use. 

lan Harrison 


released the aloum EZ 
Listening For Suicides as 
Darkjet. He declined 
to participate in 2005's 
Milk'N' Cookies reunion. 


SINGER-SONGWRITER 

. (6.1943) played with 
Marianne Faithfull (he also 
arranged 1965's LP Come My 
Way), Nicky Hopkins' Sweet 
Thursday and John Mayall’s 
Bluesbreakers. In the latter 
group he met sax player 
Johnny Almond:the duo 
formed jazz-rockers 
Mark-Almond in 1970, and 
released eight albums, the 
last being 1996's Nightmusic. 
Mark later recorded ambient 
musicfor his own White 
Cloud label in New Zealand, 
winning a Grammy in 2004 
for his recording of the 
Tibetan chant of the Monks 
Of Sherab Ling Monastery. 


SONGWARITER and actor 


(6.1931) had along TV career 
and is best known as Jim Trott 
from BBC sitcom The 
Vicar Of Dibley. But 

in the '60s he also 


the times, their found huge 
delayed 1976 SUCCESS as a 
album would composer, 
not реа. his songs 
North then including the 
moved to Herman’s 
London and Hermits hit Mrs 


embraced punkto 
form the short-lived 

Radio, soon renamed Neo 
(North used the latter name 
for his 1979 solo album). An 
early adopter of synths for 
1980's new wave solo LP My 
Girlfriend’s Dead, he also 
worked with The Fast, 

ran a recording studio in 
Manhattan, and in 2009 





Brown You ve Got 

A Lovely Daughter, 
Jess Conrad's Mystery Girl 
and Joe Brown's [hat's What 
Love Will Do, as well as singles 
for The Vernons Girls. He 
also wrote the lyrics for John 
Barry's Beat Girl film theme 
and Alan Price's musical 
based on Andy Capp. 


Jenny Bulley and Clive Prior 








































































MOJO 109 


110 MOJO 


es 


y 


M 
S 


...the 
Virgin label launches 


L EXO 


X 


quU 

n в 
M. Wa 
"АГ M 





with Tubular Bells 


"We are about to launch our 

MAY 25 own independent label," wrote 
Richard Branson, informing the vinyl outlets 
of Britain of the birth of Virgin Records. "If by 
chance, you're having difficulties... get in 
touch with us direct, by phone or letter, and 
tell us your problems." 

Branson had his own problems to stay on 
top of. As well as Virgin Mail Order and record 
shops, he was running The Manor, his 
residential studio outside Oxford. In late '71, 
Obsessive, introverted musical talent Mike 
Oldfield entered the picture. Born in 1953 in 
Reading, Oldfield had a troubled background, 
and talked of remembering the trauma of his 
own birth. Having joined Kevin Ayers' Whole 
World on bassat 16, he was working with 
Jamaican singer Arthur Louis when he played 
a demo to Manor engineers Tom Newman 
and Simon Heyworth. Branson and his 
second cousin Simon Draper, Virgin's A&R 
and marketing director, were duly advised 
to lend an ear. 

"It was a beautiful haunting tape," 
said Branson, who would pitch it to 
six labels over the next 12 months. 
"[Eventually] | said, Screw it, let's 
start a record company and put it 
out ourselves." 

Oldfield had multitracked the 
demo at home in Tottenham on a 
modified Bang & Olufsen tape deck 
borrowed from Ayers, employing 
organ, guitar, bass and, for its 
drone-like noise, a vacuum cleaner. 


A classical and rock fan whose mind was 
blown by seeing Keith Tippett's prog big 
band Centipede, Oldfield told the BBC, 
"Tubular Bells, it was the result of my whole life 
up until the age of 18, 19." 

Branson offered him studio time, finance, 
management services and a contract. 
Starting work іп November '72, Oldfield 
began bringing his demo to fully-realised life, 


nn 
Ж 


r "a. ы“ 
a 





. Mike Oldfield ~) 


TUBULAR BELLS 


SS 


= Wrote this Bong for you 
| (clockwise from left): Mike 
Oldfield enjoys his suc- 
М cess; hit single and Virgin 
{ label; Linda Blair т The 
Exorcist; thrusting young 
record executive Richard 
В Branson; (bottom, from 
_ left) Tubular Bells and, for 
‚ 48p, The Faust Tapes. 





playing nearly everything himself and 
putting his Telecaster through the home- 
made plywood effects box he called the 
‘Glorfindel’. The tubular bells, he explained, 
were being removed from the studio when 
he decided to use them. Also passing was 
Vivian Stanshall, there to record the Bonzos' 
farewell Let's Make Up And Be Friendly. 
Declared 'Master of Ceremonies, he would 
list each instrument used for the finale of the 
opening 25-minute track. "Viv was standing 
next to me wearing a cowboy hat, reeling 
about because he was so drunk,” Oldfield 
recalled to Q. "I had to write down the words 
and point atthe appropriate word just before 
he was to say it." 

Oldfield returned in February '73 to 
complete side two. The shifting nature of the 
album's two side-long tracks required much 
overdubbing and tape splicing - estimated 
by Newman at 70 to 80, rather than the 
thousands reported in the press. Branson 
wanted to call it Breakfast In Bed: appalled, 
Oldfield suggested Tubular Bells, after 
Stanshall's cheery enunciation of the same. 
Another crucial element was the cover art's 
twisted, chromium-plated bell, designed and 
photographed in hyperreal style by Trevor 
Key. Response to the unusual and 
mesmeric album was rapturous: 
Observer/Spectator critic Tony 
Palmer wrote that it owed much 


n 
у, ^hl uc: ч НАЕ 
И, to "Sibelius, Vaughan Williams, 
И 


В, Michel Legrand, and The Last 
P PN E tin 


Night Of The Proms," while John 
Peel played all of side one on his 
May 29 show. 

Virgin released other albums 
on the same day: Flying Teapot 
by Australian-French cosmic- 
proggers Gong, the star-packed 
Manor Live by Steve York's 





ALSO ON! тор TEN 
"n SAO PAULO 
Camelo Pardalis and Faust's schizoid, р Q Y (BRAZIL) 
Dadaesque The Faust Tapes. All sold for a X» ы 
reasonable £2.19, apart from the Faust LP, m ^T PF YOU'RE A 
which cost a mere 48p (Draper later admitted f МР LADY PETER 
Virgin lost 2p on every copy sold). The #7 "exl SKELLERN LONDON 
biggest response was for Tubular Bells, which A kell Ш БА 
was performed live at London's Queen * 6 t ~ THE DOOBIE 
Elizabeth Hall on June 25, with a stage-wary BROTHERS WARNER 
Oldfield joined by Stanshall, Steve Hillage, _ ADV 
Mick Taylor and members of Henry Cow. Scitis Uf nons WE LIVE 
After entering the Top 40 albums charts jingle Tie A Yellow Ribbon TOGETHER с 
in July 1973, Tubular Bells reached Number 1 Round The Ole Oak Tree by TOP TAPE 
in October '74, eventually clocking up more полоша YOU ARE THE 
than five years in the Top 75. п December = rea aie res SUNSHINE 
Panic in ШЕШШ OF MY LIFE 
1973, Tubular Bells Part One was used asthe Aberdeen BONIS tops charts in Canada, STEVIE WONDER 
theme to satanic mega-hit The Exorcist; in unstoppable Australia, Ireland, the TAMLA MOTOWN 
March '74 the album hit US Number 3, while socks machine. LENITER О AMOR, AMOR, 


an edit of the song helpfully highlighted as 





Belgium and South Africa. 


AMOR MARCOS 
ROBERTO CONTINENTAL 


The Original Theme To ‘The Exorcist’ M 

dad Number 7. Yet Oldfield refused to A ad d In S а n e e ied FELIZ ANGELO 

tour or be interviewed, and retired to rural At [М ит b er [ Power reaches US Number Е 

Herefordshire to plan 1974's Hergest Ridge. 182. Around this time, — ا و‎ 
Virgin Records would go on to huge MAY 5 David Bowie's Aladdin Sane Med FRA E JOHN FERMATA 

success, with signings including Tangerine enters the UK charts at play Peter Pan on Broadway. SO LUCKY 

Dream, the Sex Pistols, Janet Jackson and Number 1 and stays there all month. On NAE ad 


Peter Gabriel, before Branson sold up in 
1992. There would, however, be financial 


Мау 8 its creator goes to see Peter Cook 
and Dudley Moore's show Behind The 


| ] The Senate Watergate 
Committee begins its 


PD LOVE YOU 
TO WANT ME 


issues between the men who established it, Fridge at the Cambridge Theatre in Covent Nn ULM о RUN 
and Oldfield admits that 48 minutes into his Garden. On May 12 he begins a UK tour at ref rm BO e DA GAITA 
1990 LP Amarok a Morse code sequence Earls Court, where the future Sid Vicious Waves' At The Watergate (EL CHICO DE 
spells out "Fuck Off RB". But their friendship, attends. With nine costume changes a (The Truth Come Pourin’ Out), LA ARMONICA) 
| i Fred Wesley & The J.B.s SERGIO REIS RCA 
like Tubular Bells, endures. Over the years, night, the tour reaches Aberdeen Music y e VICTOR 


Oldfield's made three sequels, re-recorded 
it, remixed it with dance beats and played it 
at the opening ceremony of the London 
Olympics in 2012. “People ask, ‘why did you 
write Tubular Bells?" he mused in 2014. “And | 
don't know why – | didn't do it for a reason." 
lan Harrison 


m 


- Stirring itup: The Wailers 
(from second left) Peter 
Tosh, Bob Marley, Bunny 
m we on the OGWT. 


Hall on May 16, where Bowie tells Disc he's 
bought some grey Yves St Laurent socks: 
"| went in a Rolls-Royce... apart from that, 
| don’t think I’ve done anything decadent 
in the last six months.” That month, The 
Guess Who release Glamour Boy, an 
anti-glam song in an anti-Bowie sleeve. 


E 


Rockin' Funky Watergate and 
Dickie Goodman's Watergate. 


| Pink Floyd play the first 
of two sold-out dates at 
Earls Court. They unveil a 
model plane that crashes and 
burns at the climax of On The 
Run. Profits to go Shelter. 


3 George Harrison's 
fourth solo LP Living In 
The Material World is 
released. Wings’ Red Rose 
Speedway was released 
earlier in the month on May 
4, promoted by a 15-date UK 
tour with support band 
Brinsley Schwarz. 





5 Bury: to 
Brazil, іп brown: 
Skellern at 1. 


), Getty (2), Alamy (2) 


Shutterstock (3 


Ata push, Frank Sinatra 
will play a full 90 minutes for 
Drian lough next Saturday 


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MAY | The Wailers appear on BBC2's Old ing a May 24 Paris Theatre show broadcast on "Те ا‎ ы, È Em m MS ыш и 
Grey Whistle Test, playing BBC radio in June) before finishing at the Мйне VAN ! — ÁN 
Concrete Jungle and Stir It Up from April's LP Southampton Coach House on May 29. The №2. = 
Catch A Fire. On the same day the group group are pleased with the crowd responses, BE боты = 





but have never encountered the concept 
of encores before. Afterwards they begin 
work on their next long-player, Burnin’, at 
Island Studios in Notting Hill. 


record a live session for John Peel’s Top Gear 
show, which is broadcast on May 15. They 
began their first full UK tour on April 27 in 
Nottingham and play 26 dates in all (includ- 


Derby County manager Brian Clough, who will 


one day smash Vinnie Jones’ ghetto blaster, 
suggests a tape deck for your Morris Marina. 





MOJO 111 





Five Live Yardbirds and the MC5's Kick Out The 
Jams are both debut albums and live recordings. 
| can't think of any more but there must be 
loads. Can you help?? 
Dr EJ Robinson, via e-mail 


Live albums which capture their 
subjects raw need an audience, so let's discount 
live-in-the-studio debuts like Please Please Me. A 
quick selection of in-concert first forays on wax 
includes: Tom Rush's Live At The Unicorn (1962), 
Georgie Fame's Rhythm And Blues At The Flamingo 
(1963), John Mayall Plays John Mayall (1965), The 
Blues Project's Live At The Café Au Go Go (1966)... so 
yes, loads. Other significant examples include Hot 
Tuna's first album (1970), Jeff Buckley's 25-minute 
EP Live at Sin-é (1993), Suck On This by Primus (1989) 
and Hüsker Dü's paint-stripping Land Speed 
Record (1982). It should also be noted 
that Jane's Addiction's 1987 debut 
was recorded atthe Roxy in Los 
Angeles, but extras were added 
in the studio and applause came 
courtesy of a Los Lobos gig, 
leading us backto the knotty 
question of "bashing it out and 
tarting itup later" as Nick Lowe 
has it. Incidentally, Kick Out The 
Jams engineer Bruce Botnick 
recalled that as well as recording 
two MC5 Detroit Grande Ballroom 
gigs, the producers recorded the 
band's set sans audience the following 
day, so they had more premium takes to 
choose from for the record. Sounds like a box set of 
all the performances is in order? 


WHOSE COCAINE SONG? 


I remember once hearing a rough blues song in a 
record shop in Denmark, which was a version of 
the Reverend Gary Davis's Cocaine Blues which 


112 MOJO 


uil | 





Whose first LPs 
were live ones? 


ABNER 
IN 








T's 
PARTY 
TIME 


seemed to have jokes and 
laughter added. Any ideas 
who it was? 

Gary Brophy, via e-mail 

This sounds like 

Cocaine by Abner Jay, which appears alongside l'm 
So Depressed, Wee Wee, | Wanna Job and Vietnam 
on his 1968 album Terrible Comedy Blues, which 
includes gags and moralistic speech between 
tunes. Georgia-born Jay released eight albums 
and described himself as a "Philosopher, Lecturer, 
Composer, Singer and ONE MAN BAND... the 
first of the original black musicians... the originals 
are dead, and he is half dead." Jay checked out 
in 1993 at the age of 72. 


WHEN DID THE 
PALM COURT SOUND 
COME BACK? 


When did the '30s come backin pop and rock? I’m 
moved to ask after listening to Vangelis's 1980 
song Not A Bit Of It - All Of It, but I know 
ON it was much earlier than that. 
Martin Price, via e-mail 


Let's start with 
post-war throwback musicals like 
The Boy Friend and Salad Days, 

and Noél Coward's sensational 
1955 Las Vegas residency and 
live album. The world of pop 
was impressed, and so vintage 
jazz enthusiasts The Temperance 
Seven hit Number 1 with their 
take on 1930 tune You're Driving 
Me Crazy in 1961, followed by other 
comedic releases from the early Bonzo 
Dog Doo-Dah Band, Bob Kerr's Whoopee 
Band and The New Vaudeville Band. The cat was out 
ofthe bag: in the later '60s John Arthy formed the 
Pasadena Roof Orchestra, Tiny Tim broke through in 
'68 singing т the style of early '30s heart-throb Rudy 
Vallee, and later suave Bryan Ferry's Gatsby-era 
persona had pop hits with covers of These Foolish 
Things and Smoke Gets In Your Eyes in 1973 and 74. 















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i " м Lh га а а я í se E PVs Г. à TS ; Ч | pid x Р 
- unm АГ гаду ре РЕ МААРА у. E ч, = түл ee | 





Mad Dogs and English- 
men: (clockwise from left) 
paint-strippers Hüsker 
Dü take a breather; Моё! 
Coward and Gertrude 
Lawrence (right) smooch 
at the 88s; Abner Jay's 
Terrible Comedy Blues; 
stinky GG Allin scorns 
audiophilia. 


The zenith, arguably, was 
reached in 1998 when Neil 
Tennant gathered Ferry, 
Paul McCartney, Elton John, Marianne Faithfull and 
others to create Twentieth Century Blues, a tribute 
album featuring songs penned by Coward. 


WHICH SOUNDS 
WERE THE WORST? 


(Re: ‘What are the worst-sounding commercially 
released albums?', MOJO 329) [ат reminded of 
playing for the first, and only time, the live album 
by Dirt - Never Mind Dirt — Here's The Bollocks, a 
1982 LP release on Crass Records, retailing at a 
tempting £2. Dreadful!!! 

Dil Longstaff, Reading 


Illinois’ powerpop mavericks Shoes self-recorded 
their eventual debut Black Vinyl Shoes at home on 
a 4-track. The production - or lack thereof - is 
startling, though in a way it adds a bit of endearing 
magic. The songs themselves are all winners. 
Sander Varusk, via e-mail 


Thanks for the suggestions of other 
bum-quality releases: certain ‘80s Trax Records 
pressings made using recycled vinyl (labels and all), 
Andrew White's 1972 LP Live In Bucharest (one critic 
said it sounded "so bad the cymbals often sound like 
garbage can lids") and GG Allin's 1988 Freaks, Faggots, 
Drunks & Junkies, which is meantto sound terrible. 


Thanks to all readers who noted the unfortunate 
errorinissue 329’s Ask MOJO - of course Mick 
Ronson didn't play on All The Young Dudes. 

We apologise unreservedly for the error. 


CONTACT MOJO 


Have you got a challenging musical question for the MOJO 


Brains Trust? E-mail askmojo@bauermedia.co.uk and 
we'll help untangle your trickiest puzzles. 





Getty (2), FFI/Avalon 


Getty (3) 


Grooving With 
A Pict(ure) E ge 


Win! A print of The Dark 
Side Of The Moon's legendary 


tape box, plus more DSOM 
Floyd (and Abbey Road) swag. 


F THE classic albums recorded at 
Q Abbey Road Studios, Pink Floyd's 

The Dark Side Of The Moon is one of 
the mightiest. Now, the album's rarely seen 
side one master tape has been brought out 
of the archive and turned into a limited 
edition of 250 replica prints. The EMI Tape 
Box Folio - Side One is lovingly handmade 
toits original dimensions and comes with 
a booklet and certificate of authenticity. 

We have one (see top), worth £200, to 

give away asthis month's crossword prize! 
There's also more covetable Dark Side Of The 
Moon merchandise, including a Heart Beat 
Cashmere Scarf, a Fleece Blanket, a Flight 


MA 











FINT 














Bag and aHip 
FlaskSet, and such 
tasty Abbey Road 
items as branded 
drumsticks, 
plectrums, a 
handsome notebook, and more! Plus! A vinyl 
copy ofthe new Floyd 1990 long-player 

Live At Knebworth (above, right). п all, the 
haulis worth more than £600. 

So pitch the grey cells against Swing, 
Swang, Swingin' Fred Dellar's crossword. Fill 
in and send a scan of it to mojo@bauerme- 
dia.co.uk, making sure to type CROSSWORD 
331 in the subject line. Entries without that 
subject line will not be considered. 

Please include your home address, 
e-mail and phone number. The closing date 
for entries is June 2. For the rules of the quiz, 
see www.mojo4music.com 


https://shop.abbeyroad.com 


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BEEN 








MOJO 329 


Across: 1 Shane 
MacGowan, 9 No 
More To The Dance, 
10 Bon Iver, 12 Tom 
Rush, 13 Sine, 16Love, 
18 Let's Dance, 19 
Renegade, 21 Mud, 
24 Meg, 25 Area, 

26 Nature Boy, 29 Beat 
Dis, 30 lan, 31/32 Jim 
Morrison, 36 Reedy, 
38 Eddie, 39 
Boomtown Rats, 

41 Surf's Up, 42 Moist, 
43 Bambi, 44 Lori, 

46 Raga, 47 Johnson, 
49 Doug, 50 Don'tLie, 
51 Stay,52DownSo 
Low, 55 Sami, 56 EMI, 
57 Into, 58 Usher, 

59 Aim, 60 Saxon, 

61 Garland. 


Down: 1 Sandie Shaw, 
2 Aimee Mann, 3 Eire, 
4 Action, 5 Guthrie, 
6/45 When She Was 
My Girl, 7 Cheese, 

8 In Too Deep, 11 One 
Grain Of Sand, 

14 Neu, 15 Scat, 

16 Lamb, 17 Vega, 

20 N-Joi, 21 Midgets, 
22 Dusty Springfield, 
23 Iris, 27 Arrow, 

28 Yardbirds, 33 I’m 
Real, 34 Nesmith, 

35 Western Swing, 
36 Rare, 37 I'm Coming 
Out, 40 Old Gold, 

43 Breeders, 44 Lady 
Soul, 47 Jawbox, 

48 Naomi, 53 Sean, 
54 Limo. 


Winner: Mick 
Reeves of Prescot 
wins an Astell&Kern 
SR25 portable digital 
audio player. 


a 
| 


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md = = 


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ACROSS 

1 See photoclue A (4,4) 

5 How James Brown claimed ownership 
(13,3) 

10 The Verve's only Number 1 single 
(3,5,4,4) 

12 The Moody Blues covered this Bessie 
Banks classic (2,3) 

14 ------- --------- and The Brown Ale 
Cowboys (Mike Harding) (7,9) 

17 Laurie Anderson's were Strange (6) 
18 Band whose breakthrough album was 
The Grand Illusion (1977) (4) 

20 ------ Sprout (6) 

22 Freeez's biggest hit (1.1.1.) 

23 Film that linked The Monkees and Jack 
Nicholson (4) 

25 Finally, a hit for Etta James (2,4) 

27 It went Top 5 for Placebo (5,3) 

30 It was Johnny Ray's blubbering hit (3) 
32 See photoclue B (4) 

34 The Hollies delivered this confirmation 
(3,1,4) 

35 See 7 Down 

36 Charlie Harper's punk heroes (1.1.4) 
37 Scorpio Rising film director Kenneth (5) 
38 He was once part of 10cc (3,5) 

40 Tommy Roe sang her praises (6) 

41 Band formed by Jay Farrar after the 
break-up of Uncle Tupelo (3,4) 

43 Carole King's lyrical '70s label (3) 

45 It was little and read by Love (3,4) 

46 The Cure's first pop chart single (1,6) 
47 Iggy and The ------- (7) 

48 It was The Doors' last album with Jim 
Morrison as front man (1.1.5) 

50 -- -- Silver Lining (Jeff Beck) (2,2) 

51 Back In The ---- (The Beatles) (1.1.1.1) 
52 Initially, The Sound Of Philadelphia 
КЕК) 

57 Country music icon Тех (6) 

58 ----- Tentacles (5) 

59 She was formerly a member of The 
New Pornographers (4,4) 

60 British folk band whose пате 1$ 
Orcadian for natural light (3) 

61 Not an album or EP (6) 

62 A nine-piece band (5) 

63 Dear ------ (Roy Wood) (6) 

64 White Stripes drummer Ms White (3) 


DOWN 

1 His last album was L-O-V-E in 1965 (3,4) 
2 Her first release was Ringo, | Love You (4) 
3 Tim Buckley album named after a 
Spanish poet (5) 

4 It's a Mavis Staples album (2,3,2) 

6 He was The Byrds' drummer and multi- 
instrumentalist (4,7) 

7/35 Leonard Cohen's melodic 
construction (5,2,4) 

8 Skip Spence's only studio album (3) 

9 Just Like ----- (Heinz) (5) 

11 They're Black and come from Akron (4) 
13 See photoclue С (7,7) 

15 The Bee Gees' light bulb moment (4) 
16 A question posed by World Party 
(2,2,4,5) 

18 Rising --- ----- (Doc Watson) (3,5) 

19 Swindon's greatest, surely? (1.1.1) 

21 Martin Fry's alphabetical hit-makers 
(01.1) 

23 Siouxsie And The Banshees opened 
this album with Dazzle (6) 

24 Hardcore punk band from Vancouver 
(1.1.1) 

26 UB40’s Campbell (3) 

28 Could be Willie, could be Rick (6) 

29 Folkie Glenn, once of The Limeliters (9) 
31 U2's tribute to Billie Holiday (5,2,6) 
33 David Gates was their lead singer (5) 
37 Gong's Daevid (5) 

39 That Hi-Di-Ho Calloway (3) 

40 Pretty Much Your Standard Ranch ----- 
(Mike Nesmith) (5) 

42 Billy Preston's astronautical 
instrumental (4-5) 

43 Award-winning British-based 
bluesman, born in the Lebanon (4,5) 

44 Did The Fall break free with this 
album? (9) 

49 Coloured like Al Stewart's fourth 
album (6) 

53 DJ Shadow's was Private (5) 

54 Ouch! Gordon Sumner? (5) 

55 Roy, Neil, Steve maybe? (5) 

56 Junglist Mr Size - or a Bobby Brown 
release (4) 


MOJO 115 





| | 


у) 


Gingham Style: Mick 
Talbot (left) and Paul 
Weller, in tribute to the 
Brideshead Revisited TV 
show, on the Cambridge 
video shoot for August 
'83 45 Long Hot Summer. 


Getty, George Chin/Iconicpix, Shane Chapman 


GOODBYE 


Mick Talbot and 







The Style Council 


0 AUGUST 1982 


Paul had just come back off holiday in Italy 
and asked me to meet him in the West End. 
He said, “I've got a new project," and I didn't 
know if he meant a one-off or a band or what. 
| think the meeting went on for much 
longer than either of us expected. If you look 
atthe cover of [1985 Style Council album] Our 
Favourite Shop, that panorama of influences, 
alot ofthat was in that chat we had in '82. We 
were getting deep into Nell Dunn novels, and 
Ken Loach's adaptations of them. We talked 
about Tony Hancock and George Orwell. 
| think | brought up George Bernard Shaw! 
It was more about your ethos to life than how 
you played the piano. 

Our backgrounds were similar: suburban 
working-class from the south side of London. 
Paul was only four months older than me. In 
the slang of my area at the time we would 
both have been 'peanuts' - people who were 
a bittoo young to be proper 
suedeheads. 

We did two or three days 
recording very early in 
January 1983. It was just me, 
Paul and Zeke Manyika, the 
Orange Juice drummer. And 
we gotthree singles out of 
it: Money-Go-Round, Speak 
Like A Child and A Solid 
Bond In Your Heart, and the 
B-sides. It all clicked. And the 
lack of rules or doctrine was 





was very disenchanted that they had split up. 
One of our first shows was a Youth CND thing 
at Brockwell Park. There was only one way in, 
| seem to recall, and there were а few people 
banging on the windows of our minibus. 


A few people screaming. A few people crying. 


It was almost a religious thing. 


GOODBYE MARCH 1990 


The beginning of the end? | suppose we kind 
of lost alot of people with The Cost Of Loving 
[1987]. We knew we could have done another 
Our Favourite Shop, but it wasn’t what we’d 





done. We'd never made the same record twice. 


My take on it is that we got too embroiled 
in changing our production, rather than 
the quality of the songs. We were trying to 
embrace contemporary soul, and maybe it 
didn’t suit us. But don’t forget that Long Hot 
Summer had some of that too. 

When we did Confessions Of A Pop Group 
[1988], we believed in it. We thought we'd 
done a pretty good job. But there's always 
a domino effect and we suffered on the back 
ofthe one before. Then we did Modernism: 

A New Decade, and that was when we had a 
chat and went, | think this 

| will be our last album. But 
of course it never came out. 
The new guy at Polydor said, 
"This doesn't sound like a 
Style Council album!" But 
that was the whole point. 
None of them did. 

The Royal Albert Hall 
show in 1989 is the famous 
show where fans apparently 





but | sometimes wonder 





really refreshing. 


The Jam thing? | don't “fF nean 


think that could be ignored. 
There was an element that 


114 MOJO 


СІ if a couple of those shows 
wnicn haven't been combined in 
| the mythology. Because 

there was a bit of unrest at 


ripped up their programmes, 


the 1987 Albert Hall 
show too, when we 
screened our strange 
little film, Jerusalem. 
| mean, which one was 
our Judas gig? 
Our last show was a 
benefit in February 1990, then 
| think there was a press release in March 1990 
saying we'd knocked it on the head. But it 
didn't feel like a brutal snap, because we were 
all really busy at [Weller's] Solid Bond Studios, 
with Dee C Lee's album [Free Your Feelings] 
and the Young Disciples and lots more 
besides. And then Paul got his solo deal and 
we did Strange Museum together on that. 
And | was on the next two solo albums. 

When we did the Style Council documen- 
tary [Long Hot Summers], it was Paul's idea 
that the four of us - me, him, Dee and 
[drummer] Steve White - played A Very Deep 
Sea [from Confessions. ..], it felt like a fitting 
end to the film. When it aired [on Sky Arts, in 
December 2020], all our phones went mad. It 
really touched a lot of people. And that's all 
it’s about т the end. 





Danny Eccleston 


Changing moods: 
TSC at the Albert 
Hall, July '89; (inset) 
Talbot today. 


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